"Felix, release the yoke! There is nothing out there but gas and radiation!" Odette didn't wait for a response. She threw her entire weight against his arm, pinning his hand against the console.The Rusty Pelican bucked, a violent, bone-rattling spasm that sent a shower of sparks raining down from the ceiling. Outside, the nebula glowed with a sickly, bruised light, swirling in impossible patterns that defied every law of physics she knew. Felix’s eyes were still wide, fixed on a phantom interceptor that existed only within the architecture of his own fractured, drive-linked brain."They're burning us, Odette! The second volley—it’s locking on to the engine vent!" Felix’s voice reached a fever pitch, frantic and thin. He fought her grip, his muscles corded and twitching. "We have to dump the heat! If we don't dump the heat, the drive will—""The drive is gone, you idiot! Look at the floor!" Odette lunged, pointing at the engine room bulkhead. The violet glow, once a vibrant, parasitic

The silence was heavier than the vacuum outside. It was a suffocating, absolute quiet that rang in Felix’s ears, punctuated only by the rhythmic tick-tick-tick of cooling titanium. He stared at his own reflection in the darkened nav-screen. He looked like a ghost—sunken eyes, hollowed cheeks, and a hairline fracture of grime across his forehead."We’re alive," he whispered. His voice sounded like dry leaves skittering across pavement.Odette didn't answer immediately. She was sprawled on the deck plating, her back against the command chair, her breathing ragged and shallow. She reached up, fumbling with the seals of her suit, and peeled the helmet off. Her hair was matted with sweat, sticking to her forehead in dark, frantic streaks. She threw the helmet aside, and it bounced with a dull, hollow thud against the bulkhead."We’re alive," she echoed, though there was no victory in her tone. "But we’re also a billion credits short of a payday and approximately three minutes away from a c

"Thirty-two percent," Felix whispered, his eyes locked on the primary scrubber diagnostic. "We’ve dropped ten points in an hour. The filtration mesh is completely carbon-fouled."Odette didn't look up from her repair kit. She was busy stripping insulation off a salvaged wire, her hands moving with a mechanical, jerky rhythm. "So stop the bleed. Bypass the secondary manifold and shunt the output directly into the cabin. It’ll be louder, but it’ll scrub faster.""If I shunt the output, I draw another four percent from the thermal core," Felix countered, his voice tight. "The cabin temp is already hitting four degrees Celsius. You bypass the manifold, you trade the air for a slow-motion freeze."Odette dropped her wire cutters. The sound, metallic and sharp, rang through the bridge like a gunshot. She stood up, her joints popping in the silence. "Is that a choice, Felix? We’re drifting in a tin can, and you’re worried about the temperature?""I’m worried about the fact that if we get too

"A tomb we're going to loot," Felix said, his voice hard as he tapped his heavy utility wrench against his thigh. "Unless you want to freeze to death while debating interior design."Odette stared at him for a long, unblinking second before she grabbed her flashlight from the console. "Lead the way. If the floor collapses under us in the galley, I’m blaming your structural math.""My math is the only reason we're breathing foul air instead of hard vacuum," Felix muttered, turning toward the forward crawlway.The corridor leading to the Pelican’s gutted galley was a jagged corridor of scorched steel and frozen condensation. Their breath billowed in thick, grey clouds before the sweep of their flashlight beams. Every step crunched over a layer of crystalline frost and burnt insulation dust."Watch your left," Odette warned, her light cutting across a sheared hydraulic line that hung like a dead serpent from the ceiling. "The frame is sagging here.""I see it," Felix breathed, ducking be

"We aren't alone," she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, low vibration. She didn't move toward the conduits. She stood rooted, her pulse pistol unholstered.Felix froze, his boot hovering an inch above a buckled floor plate. "If you’re going to tell me the ship is talking to you again, save it. I need those conduits.""It’s not the ship," Odette hissed, cutting her light. Darkness slammed into them like a physical weight, cold and absolute. "The thermal readout on my HUD... it just spiked. Something is moving in the crawlspace behind the pantry bulkhead."Felix clicked his own light off. He didn't want to see what was out there. "We’re in a vacuum-sealed wreck. If it’s not us, it’s a localized power surge mimicking a signature. You taught me that yourself.""Surges don't have mass," she countered, her whisper brittle. "Listen."A faint, metallic scrape resonated through the deck plating. It was rhythmic, deliberate, and entirely too heavy to be the ship’s cooling cycle.Felix f