The Fearless hung in the asteroid field like a broken promise.

  Deep inside the gut of the kilometer-long abandoned starship, Beatrix ignored the theoretical majesty and focused on the heat searing through her gloves. Three weeks to get here. One weld left. Don’t fuck it up. She braced her magnetic boots against the blast door rim and leaned into the plasma cutter.

  The blade spat molten alloy that died instantly in the vacuum. Don’t rush. Rush and you warp it. You seal the door forever. You waste oxygen.

  Her scavenger instincts, six years sharp, screamed at her to walk away. Military-grade seals. Bodies in the corridors. Whatever was behind this door, people had killed for it.

  But her brother was dying. Tomorrow she’d get the price of his treatment. Very likely, a countdown to pay. She couldn’t afford to be careful anymore. Dante needed her.

  Temperature on panel edge exceeds safe handling parameters, Virgil droned in her ear. Recommend cool-down.

  “No time.” She feathered the trigger. The metal glowed guilty white. “We break it or we burn it.”

  Virgil went quiet. The AI in her [Tier 1] Humanware knew the math was ugly. It also knew she had a [Scavenger-class] configuration. She would feel the vibration change, a structural groan only a cutter would recognize.

  The weld snapped.

  She killed the arc, hooked her pry bar into the seam, and shoved. The blast door surrendered with a silent shudder that vibrated up her bones. A sharp smile cut her face. Got you.

  The corridor beyond had never seen scav light. Emergency strips flickered on, glowing sickly yellow. Motion sensors pinged with grudging life.

  Then her suit screamed.

  Hull breach detected. Sector seven, right shoulder joint.

  “What?” She twisted. The jagged door edge had caught her suit. A rookie tear. Idiot. “Seal it!”

  Sealing. Emergency foam deployed. Amber warnings flashed. Primary breach sealed at sixty-eight percent efficiency. Air loss rate: point-two-eight liters per minute.

  “How long?”

  Forty-seven minutes of viable atmosphere.

  Her jaw tightened. She’d budgeted for ninety. Recommend immediate evacuation and suit repair.

  “No.” She pushed deeper, light cutting through dust. “We’re finishing this.” Three weeks of hope and credit bled. She wasn’t leaving with just a repair bill.

  Power active in this section, Virgil noted.

  “Yeah.” Her light swept clean, pristine walls. No scorch marks. A tomb within a tomb. “On its own grid. They really didn’t want anyone unplugging the nightlight.”

  Restricted signage marched down the walls in Old Earth script. Virgil translated: Restricted Area. Authorized Personnel Only. Violation Subject to Termination.

  “Cheerful bunch,” she muttered. Dead for years and still threatening her.

  The corridor kinked at a buckled bulkhead. Her radiation detector clicked faster. Just shaving days off the end, she thought. Add it to the tab.

  Her light caught the body.

  It was slumped against a sealed inner hatch, one hand fused to the access panel by flash-frozen suit material, the other reaching for the manual release. The helmet visor was a spiderweb of cracks, the face behind it a hollow of black dust. But the posture was clear: he’d died trying to get in, not out.

  Dead don’t need their gear, Bodhi’s rule echoed. But this wasn’t gear. This was a signpost. He’d died reaching for what was inside. A cold thrill shot through her. It was still there.

  Air remaining: forty-three minutes.

  “Access override?” The hatch panel glowed a stubborn red.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Security schema is military-grade. I cannot bypass.

  “Then I cut.” She set the cutter to the seam. No time for delicacy. The glow of the tool painted the dead man in stuttering light.

  Air remaining: thirty-eight minutes.

  “I know. I can see the timer.” she snapped.

  The lock cracked. She paused, breathing hard. Then felt it, a deep, monotonous pulse through the deck, threading into her bones.

  “What is that?”

  Analyzing. Residual energy signature detected. This chamber has independent, active power generation.

  Her mouth went dry. “From what?”

  Unknown. Gravity generation consistent with mark-seven system. Protocols suggest indefinite operational design.

  Her magnetic boots lost purchase. She grabbed the doorframe as her feet lifted. Artificial gravity. In a derelict. Her heart hammered.

  Beyond the opening, the chamber glowed. In the center, on a pedestal, something dark drank the light.

  She cut the final seal.

  The door burst inward. In the half-second before gravity seized her, she lunged, firing her thrusters. She hit the deck in a clumsy roll, servos whining. Warning. Unexpected gravity transition. Structural stress on suit components.

  “I noticed,” she gasped, pushing up. Dust settled in slow swirls. The hum was low, constant.

  The chamber was spare. Lockers, a bench. An altar-like pedestal.

  On it sat a black cube.

  She approached. Her sensors painted it with cascading, impossible data. It was the size of a briefcase, made of a light-swallowing material. Liquid circuitry pulsed beneath its surface. A twelve-pointed star was etched at its center.

  “Virgil. What is this?”

  Analyzing.

  No visible locks. No beams. Nothing good is ever this easy.

  Analysis complete. Unregistered Humanware module. Inert power state. Unknown security schema.

  “Value?” She asked, as she looked in the back. There was a codebar. Virgil scanned it.

  Unknown. Classification: OMEGA Military Humanware. Possible [Tier 5]. Experimental. Unit three-six-nine.

  OMEGA. A ghost story of Old Earth. MAGI tech, the AI Overlords. The kind that bought planets or got you vanished. The kind that could buy Dante a lifetime.

  Her hand hovered. “How do I extract it?”

  The module is magnetically locked to the pedestal. Extraction requires targeting the housing at the base. However, a secondary energy field is present, a harmonic stabilizer. It dampens the magnetic lock. Disrupt it first.

  A stabilizer. She scanned the pedestal base. A faint, almost invisible shimmer in the air. A low-grade containment field. Military over-engineering. Paranoid bastards. It’s not like someone is going to steal it.

  She couldn’t shoot it. Couldn’t cut it without risking the module.

  Estimated time to analyze field frequency: twelve minutes.

  “Don’t have it.” She eyed her toolkit. Her eyes landed on her suit’s malfunctioning shoulder joint, still leaking a trickle of nano-sealant foam. The foam was conductive, designed to harden and bridge minor electrical faults.

  A stupid, beautiful idea formed.

  She scraped a glob of the semi-cured foam onto her pry bar. Then, from a pouch, she pulled a dead comms relay she’d picked up in the outer wreckage, junk, but its capacitor might still hold a residual charge. She jammed the relay into the foam blob, creating a crude, lopsided tuning fork.

  Do you require assistance? Virgil asked, its monotone almost curious.

  “Bad science.” She activated the relay’s dead-man circuit. A weak, erratic charge buzzed through the conductive foam, creating a messy, broadband energy signature. It was the opposite of a precision tool. It was a noise bomb.

  She thrust the makeshift fork into the shimmering stabilizer field.

  The field rippled, trying to dampen the chaotic frequencies. For a second, nothing. Then it overcorrected, harmonics clashing. The shimmer fractured with a sound like cracking ice and vanished.

  Secondary stabilizer field… neutralized, Virgil reported, sounding almost surprised.

  “First rule of scav club,” Beatrix grunted, tossing the junk aside. “Use the garbage.”

  She dropped to her knees, cutter flaring to life at the now-exposed magnetic housing.

  The gravity field stuttered.

  A deep lurch in her stomach. The lights flickered. Metal groaned, deeper now, a sound of intent, not decay.

  Security protocol activated. Chamber integrity compromised. Gravitational system destabilizing.

  She’d triggered it. Taking the module wasn’t the sin; prying at its defenses was. The room itself was a final trap.

  “How long?”

  Two minutes until structural failure.

  A crack splintered the deck. Then another.

  “Great,” she muttered, slicing into the housing. Sparks rained down. “Even the probability algorithms think I’m a lost cause.”

  Air remaining: twenty-nine minutes.

  The housing released with a sharp hiss. She caught the heavy, warm module as it fell. The circuitry pulsed faster against her chest. It knows.

  The gravity field screamed. A shriek in her teeth. Lights blazed and died.

  Gravitational collapse imminent.

  The deck gave way.

  She fired her thrusters, punching toward the doorway, tucking the module tight. Her damaged shoulder clipped the frame. A fresh, sickening tear.

  Secondary breach. Seal compromised.

  Her air reading plummeted. Twenty-two minutes. Twenty.

  “Show me the path, Virgil!”

  Her HUD lit up with the line leading to the exit. She pulled herself down the bucking corridor. And ran.

  Twelve minutes.

  She hit the airlock, cycled through with shaking hands. The Fearless groaned, settling around its new wound.

  Ten minutes.

  Her speeder was waiting. She threw herself in, slammed the seal. The life support washed over her, air tasting of ozone and desperate relief.

  On the rear feed, the Fearless hung, scarred. The new gash was a dark smile.

  She’d pulled a ghost from its grave.

  Beatrix set course for Umbra-3, the warm module on the seat beside her. A second heart. A promise.

  Life had been a series of unfortunate events. She didn’t believe in luck, not like Dante.

  But as the stars blurred, she couldn’t help but wonder.

  Maybe this was catastrophe number one-thousand.

  Or maybe, for once, the universe had coughed up a bone.