"That wasn't a shadow," Odette breathed, the pale blue light of her secondary HUD illuminating the sharp angles of her face as she retreated, step by silent step. "That was movement, Felix. Actual, physical displacement.""I saw it," Felix whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a panicked stowaway. "But it didn't attack. It just… receded.""Because it’s not an apex predator. It’s a scavenger," she hissed, her pulse pistol leveled at the jagged hole where the ductwork had shifted. "Just like us. The difference is, it doesn't need air to survive, and it doesn't have a morality code.""We aren't discussing the philosophy of space-rats right now," Felix snapped, his voice tight with a jagged edge of mounting terror. "We have the conduits. I have them." He gestured to the bundle of thick, copper-shielded wires he’d ripped from the galley floor, the smell of ozone clinging to his gloves like a parasite. "We leave. Now. If we trigger the light-cycle, we might see what’s hunting

"It's closing in," Felix whispered, his voice tightening until it practically snapped. "They're running completely cold. No active thrusters, no comms chatter. Just drift and momentum."Odette didn't hesitate. She grabbed his shoulder, her armored fingers digging through his tunic like a vice. "Cut the power. Everything. Now.""If I kill the last of the grid, the life support shuts down completely," Felix hissed, his eyes wide in the dim glow of the HUD. "We won't just freeze—we’ll suffocate in twenty minutes.""Twenty minutes is longer than two seconds," Odette snapped, her face inches from his in the dark. "Do you want to die in a fireball or die in the dark? Cut it, Felix."He slammed his fist against the master breaker. The faint hum that had kept them tethered to reality vanished instantly, plunging the bridge into a cold, absolute void. The ambient displays flickered once, twice, and then died, leaving only the pale, ghostly light of the distant nebula bleeding through the reinf

"An opinion that doesn't exist," Odette hissed from the shadows of the co-pilot’s pit. Her gauntlet scraped against metal as she shifted her weight. "Silas is dead, Felix. He died two sectors back when his suit depressurized. If you keep talking to the air, I’m going to gag you myself.""He’s not the one who’s going to get us killed," Felix muttered, his gaze still fixed on the empty space beside him where the ghost of Silas nodded slowly. "He says the Aegis probe isn't just drifting. It’s seeding the hull.""What?" Odette was across the small cabin in a heartbeat, her hand clamping over Felix’s mouth before he could finish the sentence.The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the microscopic ping of freezing metal expanding outside. Then came a deeper, rhythmic sound that didn't belong to the Pelican.Thump. Thump. Scritch."It’s not just a scan," Odette whispered against his ear, her breath a plume of white frost. "They’ve attached something."Felix peeled her fingers aw

"We need to bleed it," Felix said, his voice flat, devoid of any human inflection, as he stood before the flickering, dying master console of the Pelican.Odette slammed her wrench against the bulkhead, a metallic echo ringing through the freezing, oxygen-starved compartment. "Bleed what, Felix? The core is already sputtering its last breaths! If we tap into the drive's residual energy manually, the entire manifold will backfire and incinerate us both before we even clear this sector.""Not if we reroute the primary capacitor through the auxiliary life-support conduits," Felix countered, his eyes bloodshot, pupils dilated as he stared directly into the pulsing, violet light bleeding out from the deck plating. "It's the only way to mimic a heavy cruiser's signature. The Aegis patrol vessels are hunting by thermal and mass displacement. If we don't give them a ghost to chase, they're going to scan our hull directly and see every single structural fracture we're desperately trying to hid

"Hold the brace!" Felix yelled, his boots sliding across the slick, frost-coated floor plates as the Rusty Pelican lurched violently.An invisible hammer struck the starboard stabilizer with a deafening, metallic shriek that rattled their teeth. Outside the reinforced viewport, a jagged chunk of dead-world basalt spun lazily past, trailing a cloud of micro-meteoroid shrapnel that pinged against the forward shield like a shower of iron rain."We just lost the secondary manifold!" Odette shouted back, already scrambling across the canted deck toward the crawlspace access hatch. "The asteroid didn't just clip us—it sheared the primary coolant line!""Is it venting?" Felix dropped the manual wrench, his hands flying over the dying control board to isolate the sector before the loss of pressure could cascade through the living quarters."Worse—it’s flooding the lower crawlspace with superheated ammonia vapor!" Odette slammed her hand against the pneumatic release, but the valve groaned and