Chapter 4: The Cheap Ship That Ran
Embedded Files
GRANDEVAST
GRANDEVAST
Volume 1: The First Dockclaim
Volume 1: The First Dockclaim
Chapter 4: The Cheap Ship That Ran
Chapter 4: The Cheap Ship That Ran
The Mothwake did not escape Halcyon Duskport so much as fall away from it with engines attached.
The skiff lurched through the outer traffic lane sideways, nose overcorrecting, starboard thruster coughing blue fire in rude bursts, hull plates screaming against stress they had not been rich enough to avoid. Behind them, Dock Nine-Seventeen shrank into the curved immensity of Halcyon’s outer ring, a wound of flashing red lights where station security, Meridian authority, and Red Circuit violence had all collided and decided to bill Talas Rook personally.
Warnings covered the cockpit glass.
STATION CLEARANCE: DENIED
LOCAL DAMAGES: PENDING
VESSEL STATUS: UNINSPECTED
ROUTE WAR AUTHORITY: ACTIVE
RED CIRCUIT PURSUIT: CONFIRMED
CREDITS: 1
Talas gripped the pilot yoke with both hands.
“Stop telling me I have one credit,” he said.
The Mothwake replied through the cracked command board.
FINANCIAL AWARENESS IMPROVES DECISION QUALITY
“Not today it doesn’t.”
Naya Venn was half inside the open copilot maintenance wall, boots braced against the chair, one arm buried elbow-deep in a nest of wires that sparked every time the ship remembered physics. Copper diagnostic wire flickered in her braids. A thin smear of black grease cut across one cheek like war paint.
“Roll left,” she shouted.
“I’m trying.”
“No. You are requesting left emotionally. Roll left mechanically.”
Talas forced the yoke.
The Mothwake rolled left.
Barely.
A Red Circuit shot passed through the space where they had been, a needle of red light that sliced across the cockpit view and vanished into the station’s outer shadow.
Mard made a sound from the jumpseat that had no legal meaning.
Senior Auditor Vale stood behind them with one hand locked to the overhead brace, white-gold mantle secured too elegantly for a woman fleeing a cartel assault aboard a dying skiff. Her face remained composed. Her eyes did not.
She watched the tactical feed.
“Three pursuit craft,” she said. “Light interceptors. Red Circuit make. Black Index modification signatures. They are not shooting to destroy.”
“That is comforting,” Mard said weakly.
“They are shooting to disable, board, and extract,” Vale continued.
“That is less comforting.”
Another red shot flashed past the cockpit.
Naya yanked something inside the wall. The cabin lights dimmed. The starboard thruster coughed, flared, then stabilized into a rougher but steadier burn.
“There,” she said. “I gave your terrible engine a reason to continue living.”
Talas pushed the throttle.
The Mothwake surged forward with a metallic groan.
Halcyon Duskport spread behind them like a mechanical continent: rings upon rings, towers rising from the station shell, docks glittering with ships, auction halls blinking through emergency resets, traffic lanes swirling around the violet gas giant below. Beyond the station, the planet’s storm bands turned slowly in pale lavender and bruised gold.
It was beautiful in a way that did not forgive anyone.
The routeprint hovered across the cockpit glass as a blue-white line pointing beyond all safe lanes. At its far end, almost too faint to see, Null Orchard Gate waited.
Doorlight orbited Talas’s cuff beside the memory capsule and the blue scan of Orchard Child Seven’s stolen hand. Old command syntax flickered around them like thoughts forming in a language the present had forgotten.
ROUTE PREPARATION ACTIVE
COUNTERROUTE PRESSURE DETECTED
HOSTILE TETHER ATTEMPTS: 3
Talas glanced down.
“What is counterroute pressure?”
Vale answered before anyone else could.
“Route war is not only pursuit. Red Circuit will try to attach legal, technical, and navigational hooks to your claim. If they cannot take the routeprint from your body, they may attempt to follow the route through you.”
Naya emerged from the wall, eyes sharp. “So if he opens the route, they might come with us?”
“Yes.”
“Can we cut them loose?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Vale looked at Talas.
“That depends on whether Operator Rook can learn faster than they can kill him.”
Talas swallowed.
“Great.”
Mard raised one trembling finger.
“For the record, as Meridian witness, I advise against opening an unstable, contested, Deep Ledger-influenced route while under active hostile pursuit in an uninspected vessel.”
Naya stared at him.
Mard lowered his finger.
“But I acknowledge circumstances are rich with pressure.”
The Red Circuit ships appeared on the rear display.
Three black arrowhead craft, each marked by a pulsing red circuit line along its spine. They moved in formation without visible hesitation, threading through freight traffic and abandoned dock debris with insect patience. Their engines burned dark red, not bright like normal plasma. The light looked swallowed around them.
Talas angled toward an outgoing freight stream.
A convoy of ore haulers lumbered away from Halcyon in slow formation, their cargo bellies heavy with Ironswell Belt metals. Each hauler had station clearance, paid insurance, proper flags, and enough mass to make even Red Circuit think before firing through them.
“Can we hide in that traffic?” Talas asked.
“Hide?” Naya said. “No. Look temporarily less convenient? Maybe.”
He steered toward the haulers.
The Mothwake shuddered as it crossed into the wake of the convoy’s engines. Gravity ripples bumped the skiff like invisible fists. A warning flashed.
UNAUTHORIZED CONVOY PROXIMITY
HAULER INSURANCE FIELD MAY REJECT LOW-TRUST VESSEL
Talas clenched his jaw. “Not now.”
A convoy authority channel opened automatically.
“Unregistered skiff, you are entering insured freight proximity. Identify, pay formation access, or remove yourself before our lawyers become kinetic.”
Mard leaned forward.
“I can handle this.”
“You can?”
“I am an auditor.”
“Does that help?”
Mard’s expression changed, becoming wounded and proud at once.
“Occasionally.”
He touched his cuff and spoke with sudden professional clarity.
“This is Juno Mard, Meridian Exchange witness aboard emergency route operator vessel Mothwake. Pursuit craft are attempting hostile claim enforcement in Duskport exterior traffic. Request temporary convoy shadow under market safety exception seven-three.”
The hauler channel paused.
Then a rough voice answered.
“Meridian witness aboard a junk skiff?”
Mard closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Route war involved?”
“Yes.”
“Red Circuit involved?”
“Yes.”
A longer pause.
Then the hauler captain said, “I hate this station.”
“So do we,” Naya said.
The captain had not been speaking to her, but seemed to accept the answer.
“Skiff Mothwake, tuck beneath Hauler Three’s belly. No collision, no exhaust complaint, no heroic maneuvers. You scratch our hull, we convert your remains into lien art.”
“Understood,” Talas said.
The Mothwake slid beneath Hauler Three, a massive rectangular ore carrier whose underside blotted out the stars. The skiff’s cockpit darkened under its shadow. The Red Circuit ships widened their formation behind the convoy.
For a moment, the shooting stopped.
Talas breathed.
Naya did not.
“They are not gone,” she said.
“I know.”
“No, you know in your head. I mean the ship knows. Look.”
She pulled a tactical layer onto the glass. Red lines extended from the pursuit craft, thin as wire, reaching around the convoy and touching the routeprint ahead.
HOSTILE TETHER ATTEMPT: ACTIVE
BLACK INDEX ROUTE HOOK SEARCHING FOR CLAIM ECHO
RECOMMENDED: DO NOT OPEN ROUTE UNTIL TETHERS CLEARED
Talas stared at the lines.
“How do I clear them?”
Doorlight flared.
OPTIONS:
OUTRUN / MISDIRECT / SEVER / PAY / NAME
Naya frowned. “Pay?”
Talas looked at his balance.
CREDITS: 1
“No.”
Mard said, “Pay can also mean concession, bond, right-of-way, or liability exchange.”
“No.”
“Agreed.”
Vale studied the options.
“Outrun is unlikely in this vessel. Sever requires technical superiority we do not currently possess. Name may be Deep Ledger relational action, unpredictable. Misdirect may be possible.”
Naya slid back into the copilot seat and snapped her harness.
“Misdirect how?”
Vale’s eyes moved to Talas.
“Every route has an intention profile. Destination, claimholder, origin, authority, urgency. Red Circuit is trying to hook your claim echo. If they know what you intend, they can follow the shape of it.”
“So I lie to the route?” Talas asked.
“No. You lie near the route. A true command wrapped in a false expectation.”
Naya gave a short laugh.
“That is auditor poetry.”
“It is strategy.”
Doorlight brightened as if listening.
MISDIRECT AVAILABLE
REQUIREMENT: DECOY INTENTION
WARNING: DECOY MUST CONTAIN VALUE
Talas frowned.
“Contain value?”
Mard answered, “Systems ignore worthless lies.”
“Of course they do.”
The hauler convoy shook as one of the Red Circuit ships fired a warning shot across its path. Hauler Three’s captain returned on comms, voice suddenly furious.
“Black craft, you fire across my insured belly again and I will dump fourteen thousand tons of half-refined iron into your pretty teeth.”
Red Circuit did not answer.
The pursuit ships separated.
One above.
One below.
One vanishing behind the hauler formation.
Naya tapped the display.
“They are boxing us without touching the convoy.”
Vale said, “They are patient because they expect him to open the route.”
Talas looked at the routeprint.
Null Orchard Gate pulsed faintly.
Beyond it, a whisper scratched through static.
“Rook claimholder…”
The cockpit fell silent.
The whisper came again.
“Hurry…”
Talas’s hand tightened on the yoke.
“We cannot wait.”
Naya’s voice softened but stayed firm.
“If you open this wrong, Red Circuit rides our wake straight to them.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He looked at her.
She held his gaze.
“The person calling you may not survive us bringing predators to their door.”
That landed harder than any warning.
Talas turned back to the routeprint.
His mother had told him to run. Orchard Child Seven had told him to hurry. Vale told him to survive. Naya told him not to confuse motion with rescue. Mard told him everything he was doing was inadvisable, which by now had become background weather.
Doorlight’s options remained.
OUTRUN / MISDIRECT / SEVER / PAY / NAME
Talas selected MISDIRECT.
DECOY INTENTION REQUIRED
He thought of Halcyon Duskport behind him. Dock Nine-Seventeen. Kett’s parts stall. The one hull plate he had bought because he could not afford three. The public boards saying his name. The Red Circuit agents offering money for his body to remain uncollected.
What did he have that contained value?
Not money.
Not status.
Not power.
But he had a thing every market recognized.
A debt.
He opened his dock liability panel.
Numbers bloomed.
HALCYON DUSKPORT DAMAGES: CALCULATING
DOCKCLAIM DELINQUENCY: ACTIVE
CLAMP DAMAGE: PENDING
SECURITY RESPONSE: PENDING
LIKELY LIABILITY: 22,000–91,000 CREDITS
Naya stared.
“That is a wide range of terrible.”
Talas looked at Doorlight.
“Can we use this?”
Doorlight flickered.
DECOY VALUE DETECTED: LIABILITY MASS
MISDIRECT FORM: FALSE DEBT VECTOR
Mard made a strangled noise.
“No.”
Talas turned. “What?”
“No, absolutely no. You cannot weaponize unresolved station liability as a navigational decoy.”
Naya looked interested. “Why not?”
“Because liability mass is real. If he wraps a route intention in false debt vectoring, systems may temporarily believe his most valuable trajectory is toward debt resolution rather than Null Orchard Gate.”
“That sounds good.”
“It may redirect pursuers.”
“That sounds very good.”
“It may also redirect creditors.”
Naya paused.
“Toward Red Circuit?”
Mard hesitated.
“Possibly.”
Naya smiled.
“I love paperwork when it is pointed at enemies.”
Vale stepped closer.
“This is reckless.”
Talas looked at her. “Will it work?”
“It is the kind of tactic used by desperate operators with poor legal representation and nothing to lose.”
He held up his wrist.
“One credit.”
Vale’s mouth tightened.
“Proceed carefully.”
Talas opened the Command Layer.
“Create decoy intention. False priority: Halcyon liability resolution. Attach value: pending dockclaim damages. Wrap route preparation in debt vector.”
Mard covered his face with both hands.
The Mothwake processed the command.
COMMAND RECEIVED
CREATING DECOY INTENTION
WARNING: THIS MAY BE FINANCIALLY UNWISE
Naya snorted.
Talas said, “Proceed.”
The routeprint split.
One blue line remained faint and true, reaching toward Null Orchard Gate.
A second line flared bright gold-red, looping backward toward Halcyon Duskport, swollen with liability values, dock fees, unpaid station claims, damage estimates, emergency clamp penalties, and the broad spiritual misery of debt.
The Red Circuit tether lines reacted instantly.
Two of them snapped toward the brighter false line.
The third hesitated.
Doorlight pulsed.
MISDIRECT PARTIAL SUCCESS
HOSTILE TETHERS DIVERTED: 2/3
REMAINING TETHER: BLACK INDEX PRIMARY
Behind them, one Red Circuit ship veered hard toward the decoy vector, then corrected too late. Its engines flared as automated claim systems tried to follow the false debt mass. A second craft stuttered in formation, dragged half a degree off pursuit.
The hauler captain whooped over the comm.
“Whatever you just did made one of them look stupid. Approved.”
But the third ship kept coming.
Larger than the others.
Its red spine brightened.
Vale’s eyes narrowed.
“Primary hunter.”
Naya brought up the rear display. “It is not hooked to the route. It is hooked to Talas.”
Talas felt Doorlight tighten around his wrist.
A cold line touched the back of his mind.
Not pain.
Recognition.
The third Red Circuit ship opened a channel without request.
The cockpit speakers filled with the same wall-voice from the masked agent.
“FREE OPERATOR TALAS ROOK. MISDIRECTION ACKNOWLEDGED. POVERTY VECTOR CREATIVE. INSUFFICIENT.”
Naya looked offended. “Poverty vector?”
Mard said, “Technically accurate.”
“Do not help them.”
The Red Circuit voice continued.
“PRIMARY CLAIM WILL TRACK BIOLOGICAL CLAIMHOLDER. ROUTEPRINT WILL TRANSFER WHEN CLAIMHOLDER CONDITION CHANGES.”
Talas’s stomach went cold.
“When condition changes?” Naya said.
Vale answered.
“When he dies.”
The primary hunter accelerated.
Hauler Three’s captain cursed. “Skiff, they are burning through our wake. We cannot keep them off you without violating freight neutrality.”
Naya grabbed the controls beside Talas.
“Leave the convoy.”
“What?”
“If we stay, they kill us under a hauler and maybe kill the hauler too. Leave now.”
Mard said, “Into open traffic?”
“No. Into junkfield.”
She pointed.
Ahead and below the convoy, the outer station gravity had gathered a vast drifting belt of maintenance scrap, failed satellites, broken cargo frames, spent fuel drums, auction-tagged salvage, and the bones of ships too cheap to recover properly. Halcyon called it a temporary debris management zone, which meant it had existed for decades.
Talas angled toward it.
The Mothwake dropped away from Hauler Three’s shadow.
The primary hunter followed.
The junkfield swallowed them.
Immediately, proximity alerts screamed.
COLLISION RISK
COLLISION RISK
COLLISION RISK
POSSIBLE SALVAGE VALUE DETECTED
COLLISION RISK
Naya slapped the console.
“Not shopping!”
Talas threaded between a rotating cargo spine and a cracked water tank the size of a chapel. Metal flashed past the cockpit close enough to show old serial numbers. A torn billboard drifted by, still glowing faintly.
LIVE CLEAN. BUY ORBITAL.
Behind them, the Red Circuit hunter entered the junkfield without slowing.
Its hull shifted.
Panels opened. Red beams mapped debris faster than human eyes could follow. It glided through the chaos like a knife remembering every cut.
Naya swore.
“That ship is too good.”
Vale braced herself as the Mothwake scraped past a tumbling antenna array.
“Operator Rook, the primary hunter will close in less than two minutes.”
“Can we sever now?” Talas asked.
Naya checked the system. “Not with hardware.”
Doorlight flickered.
SEVER POSSIBLE THROUGH NAME ACTION
WARNING: NAME ACTION MAY DEEPEN RELATIONSHIP WITH THRESHOLD WITNESS
Mard looked up sharply.
“Do not casually deepen relationships with substructural ledger entities.”
“Nothing about this is casual,” Talas said.
Vale’s voice was quiet.
“Naming is dangerous because old systems honor it. If Doorlight is truly a threshold witness, and you ask it to sever the hunter, you may owe it definition.”
“What does it want?”
“No one knows.”
Doorlight pulsed once.
NAME ACTION AVAILABLE:
DEFINE HUNTER AS PREDATOR
DEFINE CLAIMHOLDER AS LIVING
DEFINE ROUTE AS RESCUE
DEFINE FOLLOWING AS THEFT
Talas read the four lines.
The hunter fired.
The shot clipped the Mothwake’s rear shield, if the flickering sadness around the hull could be called a shield. The ship spun. Naya shouted. Mard’s restraints locked. Vale slammed one hand into the cockpit frame and stayed upright through sheer hatred of imbalance.
Talas fought the yoke.
The skiff tumbled past a derelict passenger module filled with frozen old luggage. Stars, junk, station lights, and Red Circuit fire spun around them.
“Stabilize!” Naya shouted.
“I’m trying!”
“Try with more math!”
“Not helpful!”
The Mothwake’s nose came around.
The hunter was directly behind them.
Doorlight’s options burned brighter.
DEFINE HUNTER AS PREDATOR
DEFINE CLAIMHOLDER AS LIVING
DEFINE ROUTE AS RESCUE
DEFINE FOLLOWING AS THEFT
Talas understood then.
Maybe not with training. Not with legal knowledge. Not with route experience. But with the part of him that had lived too long beneath systems that named poverty as risk, grief as liability, desperation as poor reputation, and theft as acquisition.
Red Circuit had named Orchard Child Seven’s severed hand as provenance.
They had named a trapped person’s survival as salvage.
They had named Talas’s refusal as defamation.
They had named mercy as pricing.
The Deep Ledger was asking him what he would name things.
Talas raised his left wrist.
“Define hunter as predator.”
Doorlight flared.
“Define claimholder as living.”
The cockpit glass cracked along one edge.
“Define route as rescue.”
The memory capsule spun faster.
“Define following as theft.”
The routeprint ignited.
NAME ACTION ACCEPTED
RELATIONAL DEFINITIONS ENTERED
PREDATOR MAY NOT INHERIT THROUGH PURSUIT
LIVING CLAIMHOLDER CANNOT BE SALVAGED
RESCUE ROUTE CANNOT BE BOUGHT AS DEAD ASSET
HOSTILE FOLLOWING CLASSIFIED: THEFT
The primary hunter fired again.
This time, the red beam reached for the Mothwake and bent.
Not physically.
Legally.
Technically.
Mythically.
The beam curved away as if the universe had been convinced, for one temporary moment, that its intention was not allowed to touch them.
The hunter’s tether snapped.
Across the rear display, its red signature shattered into fragments.
Naya stared.
“You just argued with a missile.”
Mard whispered, “He defined it out of valid contact.”
Vale’s eyes were fixed on Talas.
“No,” she said softly. “Doorlight did.”
Talas felt cold move through his bones.
The route-linked capsule circled his wrist with new weight.
Doorlight projected a line only he seemed to see.
RELATIONSHIP DEEPENED
DOORLIGHT HEARD NAME
DOORLIGHT REMEMBERS
The primary hunter was not destroyed.
It veered off course, cutting through the junkfield in a violent arc. Debris slammed into its shields. For a moment, its red lights dimmed.
Naya seized the opening.
“Now. Open true route now.”
Talas stared through the cockpit glass.
Past the junkfield.
Past Halcyon’s angry glow.
Past every known lane.
The blue line to Null Orchard Gate steadied.
“Route readiness?” he asked.
The Mothwake answered.
ROUTE READINESS: 41%
RECOMMENDED MINIMUM: 80%
SURVIVAL ODDS: POOR
DRAMATIC ODDS: HIGH
Naya looked at the console.
“Why does your ship measure drama?”
“I don’t know.”
Mard squeezed his eyes shut. “I hate that I understand the distinction.”
Vale said, “You cannot wait for eighty percent. Red Circuit will recover.”
Naya’s hands flew over the copilot controls. “I can boost route readiness by burning nonessential systems.”
“What counts as nonessential?” Talas asked.
“Comfort, most lights, two safety backups, your left galley wall, and whatever this smell is.”
“Do it.”
The ship dimmed.
Somewhere behind them, something popped, hissed, and fell off.
ROUTE READINESS: 49%
ROUTE READINESS: 56%
Naya yanked another line.
The cockpit heater died.
ROUTE READINESS: 61%
Mard shivered immediately. “Was warmth nonessential?”
“In a chase, yes.”
The primary hunter reappeared on the rear display, its red signature unstable but closing.
The two misdirected Red Circuit ships had corrected and were now moving back toward them from the edges of the junkfield.
Three hunters again.
Less tethered.
More angry.
Doorlight flashed.
ROUTE WINDOW OPENING
WARNING: UNSTABLE ENTRY MAY SCATTER VESSEL ACROSS PARTIAL DESTINATIONS
“Partial destinations?” Talas asked.
Vale answered. “Pieces of us arrive in different places.”
Naya gave the console a violent look. “Not on my shift.”
She reached into the open panel, grabbed a thick cable with both hands, and jammed it into a port that did not appear designed to receive it.
The Mothwake screamed.
Naya screamed back.
The route readiness jumped.
ROUTE READINESS: 78%
“Close enough,” Naya said.
“It said eighty,” Mard protested.
Naya pointed at the rear display. “They said death. We are negotiating.”
The blue line ahead opened into a ring.
Not a jump gate. Not a normal route aperture. Talas had seen mapped route entries before: clean geometries, stabilized folds, lawful blue corridors approved by route guilds and taxed accordingly.
This was different.
The aperture ahead looked like a wound in distance. Blue-white light spiraled around a dark center. Inside it, Talas saw flashes: an orchard of metal branches, a child’s handprint, his mother turning toward him from a place she could not have survived, a door with light under it, and the broken ring of Null Orchard Gate.
The Mothwake shook as the aperture pulled at them.
Mard whispered a prayer to whichever department handled miracles.
Vale stood silent.
Naya gripped the copilot rail.
“Talas.”
He looked at her.
“Once we enter, do not chase visions. Fly the line.”
He nodded.
“Fly the line.”
The Red Circuit ships fired together.
Three red beams cut through the junkfield behind them.
Talas pushed the throttle.
The Mothwake entered the route aperture.
The universe folded wrong.
There was no forward.
No backward.
No cockpit.
No ship.
Talas became motion inside a ledger entry.
He saw Halcyon Duskport beneath him like a coin at the bottom of deep water. He saw his own name written on hundreds of markets, then erased, then written again in his mother’s handwriting. He saw the Mothwake as a child might draw it: ugly, loyal, on fire in two places. He saw Naya made of copper wires and stubborn light. He saw Mard as a stack of documents wrapped around a frightened heart. He saw Senior Auditor Vale standing in a white-gold courtroom while black vines grew beneath the floor.
Then he saw Doorlight.
Not as a person.
Not as a machine.
As a doorway standing in an endless dark field.
Light leaked beneath it.
On the door was written a question.
WHO OWNS THE WAY TO THE LOST?
Talas tried to answer, but he had no mouth.
The door opened a fraction.
Something looked out.
Not eyes.
Attention.
The Mothwake slammed back into existence.
Alarms exploded.
Talas gasped like he had been underwater.
The cockpit lights flickered on in emergency blue.
Naya was still in her seat, bleeding from one nostril, already checking systems.
Mard hung upside down in his restraints, glasses missing, hair floating in low gravity.
Senior Auditor Vale was on one knee, breathing hard, one hand pressed to the floor.
Talas looked out through the cracked cockpit glass.
Halcyon Duskport was gone.
The gas giant was gone.
The traffic lanes were gone.
They had entered a dark between-route region where the stars looked thin and distant, as if someone had drawn them from memory.
Ahead floated a field of dead navigation buoys.
Hundreds of them.
Maybe thousands.
Old route markers, broken guild beacons, failed rescue lights, signal bones. Some spun slowly. Some drifted in clusters. Some flashed weakly with ancient warnings no one had been alive to answer.
The routeprint stretched through them.
Far ahead, barely visible, a structure hung in the dark.
A ring station.
Broken.
Split along one side.
Surrounded by metal branches.
Null Orchard Gate.
No one spoke.
Then the console beeped.
ROUTE TRANSIT: SURVIVED
VESSEL STATUS: OFFENDED
LOCATION: UNINDEXED APPROACH FIELD
DESTINATION: NULL ORCHARD GATE / OUTER DEAD BUOY ORCHARD
WARNING: RED CIRCUIT PURSUIT STATUS UNKNOWN
WARNING: DEEP LEDGER PROXIMITY INCREASED
WARNING: SURVIVOR SIGNAL NEAR
Talas leaned closer to the glass.
The broken station looked dead.
But somewhere inside it, one light blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Then a voice came through the cockpit speakers.
Weak.
Real.
Close.
“Rook claimholder…”
Static.
Then:
“You brought the red buyers’ shadow.”
The rear alarm screamed.
Behind the Mothwake, space tore open in three thin red lines.
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