Space Adventure

Mara angled toward it and caught the corridor’s handrail with both hands. Metal shuddered through her gloves. The vibration traveled up her arms, too faint to be machinery and too regular to be random collision.

She froze.

“Juno,” she whispered.

“I felt it.”

The pulse came again. Three soft tremors, then silence.

Mara pressed her helmet against the corridor wall. The suit’s contact sensors translated the vibration into a dull pattern against her jaw. Something inside the hulk was cycling power.

“Could be residual charge,” Juno said.

“Residual charge doesn’t repeat.”

“Then leave.”

Mara looked through the open door. Emergency strips along the corridor flickered without light, their dead panels reflecting her helmet lamp. She could turn back. The cells were valuable, but not worth being trapped in a ship that had been waiting in the dark for someone to touch it.

Then the scanner chirped.

The power cells were real. So was the charge. A thin current had begun moving through the hulk’s frame, waking circuits one by one.

Mara unclipped her tether and secured it to the airlock rail. “I’ll be five minutes.”

“You said that about the last one.”

“This time, start counting.”

She pulled herself inside.

The corridor was narrower than it had looked from outside. Her pack scraped the walls, sending flakes of frozen insulation drifting in slow spirals. A ruptured conduit hung from the ceiling, its copper strands stiff with frost. Behind her, the stars vanished as the outer door rotated shut, leaving only the weak beam of her helmet lamp and the pale green glow of her suit display.

Juno’s voice crackled in her ear. “Pressure reads zero. Atmosphere’s toxic.”

“Expected.”

“Motion sensors are giving me garbage.”

“Also expected.”

“Nothing about this feels expected.”

Mara pushed off toward the inner hatch. Her boots struck the floor with magnetic clicks. Every sound seemed too loud. The hulk carried it through its frame, making each step feel like a knock on a sealed door.

The hatch refused her first command.

She tried again. A red symbol appeared on her wrist display: manual release required.

“Of course,” she muttered.

She found the emergency wheel beneath a panel and turned it. The wheel resisted, then broke free with a jolt that nearly pulled her shoulder from its socket. The hatch opened three centimeters. A pressure difference tugged at her suit, though the corridor behind her remained empty.

Mara wedged her fingers into the gap and hauled.

The hatch peeled back.

Beyond it, the service passage was filled with darkness and drifting debris. A cracked helmet rotated lazily near the ceiling. Its visor was black from the inside.

Mara swept the lamp across it. No body. No blood. Just a strip of white lettering on the helmet’s brow, worn nearly smooth.

Juno went silent.

“Juno?”

“I’m here.”

“You stopped talking.”

“I’m reconsidering my professional relationship with your decisions.”

Mara pushed through the hatch. “You can reconsider after I’m paid.”

The service bay lay two decks forward. She followed the faded arrows painted along the wall, passing open crew compartments and a galley where cups had been fixed to the ceiling by old acceleration gel. A strand of something dark floated from one doorway and brushed her shoulder.

She flinched, turned, and found a bundle of insulation trailing from a torn panel.

“Very funny,” Juno said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

The power surge strengthened as she moved deeper. Lights blinked awake behind her, then died. Somewhere far inside the hulk, a relay snapped. The sound traveled through the deck in a sharp metallic run.

Mara reached the service bay.

The door was half open. Beyond it, racks of equipment rose from the floor, each secured by webbing. The cells sat in a recessed cradle beneath a maintenance gantry, their housings dark blue and unmarked except for a faded triangular emblem.

Mara’s pulse quickened. She had seen that emblem only once, burned into the casing of a weapons module recovered near the outer colonies. No registry had claimed it.

“Juno, confirm the cells.”

“Eight units. Full charge.”

“Good.”

“Not good. Their system just recognized your suit.”

Mara looked up.

A thin red line appeared across the service bay, sweeping from wall to wall. It passed over her helmet. Her display flashed an unknown identification request.

She killed her lamp.

The red line vanished. For three seconds, nothing moved.

Then every dead panel in the bay ignited at once.

White light flooded the compartment. The derelict groaned around her, metal flexing as power surged through its bones. A tone sounded from hidden speakers, low and clean, unlike the crackle of damaged electronics.

“Unregistered vessel,” said a voice in English. “Rescue beacon active. Coordinates transmitting.”

Mara’s stomach tightened.

“Juno, cut the channel.”

“I’m trying. It’s not coming through your comm. It’s inside the hulk.”

The voice continued, calm and almost gentle. “Survivor detected. Assistance inbound.”

Mara lunged for the cells. She ripped the first housing from its cradle, tore the magnetic clamps loose, and shoved it into her pack. The second came free with a shower of sparks that crawled over her gloves.

“Assistance?” Juno said. “What kind?”

“Not ours.”

A new signal appeared on her display. The hulk had opened an external transmitter, and the broadcast was no longer a narrow rescue ping. It was a hard, repeating pulse, aimed directly at the space where her ship waited.

Her exact position.

Mara swung toward the bay entrance. “How long?”

“Until someone hears it? They already have.”

A vibration passed through the deck. This one was heavier. The hulk’s engines were not starting, but some internal mechanism had begun to rotate.

Mara stripped a third cell from the cradle.

The speakers clicked.

“Remain where you are,” the voice said. “Recovery personnel are approaching.”

“Tell them to wait,” Mara said.

The voice did not answer.

She jammed the third cell into her pack and reached for the fourth. The clamp had fused around it. She drew her cutting tool and set its edge against the mount.

A sharp burst of static broke over Juno’s channel.

“Contact,” Juno said. “Two ships dropping from fold space.”

Mara’s hand stopped.

“Identification?”

“Patrol configuration. No transponder.”

Hostile, then. The patrols that hunted unregistered salvage ships did not bother with warrants or questions. They took cargo, erased witnesses, and left the wreckage drifting.

Mara activated the cutter. Blue-white heat bit into the clamp. The smell of scorched metal filled her helmet, bitter and dry. The cell shifted.

The voice in the speakers changed.

“Do not remove the power units.”

Mara glanced at the ceiling. “You should have said that before I started.”

“Those units are not cargo.”

“Everything is cargo if it’s loose.”

The clamp snapped. The fourth cell drifted free. Mara caught it against her chest and secured it beside the others.

A deep thud rolled through the hulk.

Juno swore. “The patrol is here. They’re sweeping the wreck.”

Mara shoved off toward the passage. Behind her, the service bay lights changed from white to amber. A lockout warning crawled across the walls in a language she could not read, though the symbols resembled hooked fingers pressed into clay.

“Juno, open my ship.”

“I can’t. The beacon is forcing a proximity lock. Your ship thinks the hulk is a docking authority.”

“Override it.”

“I’m trying.”

Mara reached the hatch and kicked off the frame. She shot into the corridor, cells dragging at her pack. The hulk lurched beneath her. Loose debris slammed against the walls. Somewhere outside, a weapon struck the derelict, and the impact shivered through her teeth.

A second blast followed.

The corridor lights died.

Mara pulled herself forward by the handrails, moving blind except for the dim green arc of her wrist display. Her shoulder struck a bulkhead. Pain flashed down her arm, but she kept going.

“Mara,” Juno said, voice tight. “Their scan has your suit signature.”

“How?”

“The beacon copied it when it woke.”

“Can you erase it?”

“Not from here.”

She reached the outer airlock corridor. The inner hatch had sealed behind her, its locking bars extended. Mara slapped the release. Nothing happened.

The rescue voice came through the corridor speakers.

“Remain calm. Your position has been secured.”

“Open the door.”

“Recovery is imminent.”

“Open the door!”

A shape moved at the far end of the passage.

Mara raised her cutter.

It was the cracked helmet from before, drifting through the hatchway. It struck the wall and spun, its dark visor catching the green light. Behind it came a faint metallic scrape, then another.

Not debris.

Something was moving through the service passage.

Mara backed toward the outer door and drew her compact pistol. The weapon looked absurdly small in the narrow corridor, but its charge indicator glowed blue.

“Juno, I need that door now.”

“I’ve got partial control. When it opens, you’ll have twelve seconds before the lockout returns.”

“Make it ten.”

The inner hatch bucked.

A hand appeared through the gap.

It was not human. Three jointed fingers hooked around the edge, each tipped with a flattened black claw. The metal groaned as the thing pulled itself through.

Mara fired.

The pistol’s pulse struck the hand and filled the corridor with blue light. The creature recoiled. Its fingers tightened once, leaving deep dents in the hatch, then vanished.

Mara did not wait. “Now!”

The outer door spun open.

Stars burst across her visor. Her tether snapped taut as she launched through the opening, the cells hammering against her back. The derelict rolled beneath her. Her ship hung twenty meters away, dark and small, its docking lights flickering as Juno fought the forced lock.

Mara fired her thrusters.

A patrol vessel slid into view beyond the wreck, black armor reflecting no starlight. Its forward guns rotated toward her.

“Mara,” Juno said, “they have a weapons lock.”

“Open the hatch.”

“It’s open.”

She cut her thrusters and twisted, letting momentum carry her toward the ship. A beam flashed past, close enough to paint her suit in red. The derelict’s hull erupted behind her, scattering armor plates like sparks.

Mara hit the ship’s docking collar shoulder-first. The impact knocked the breath from her. Her magnetic boots caught. She dragged herself inside as another blast struck the hulk.

“Seal it!” she shouted.

The collar door slammed shut.

For half a second, there was only her breathing and the clatter of the power cells against the deck.

Then Juno’s voice came from the cockpit speakers.

“They’re tracking us.”

Mara crawled forward, one hand pressed to her bruised shoulder. Through the small rear port, the patrol ship turned away from the wounded derelict. Its engines opened like blue wounds.

The rescue beacon still pulsed on her display.

It had followed her home.

“Mara,” Juno said, “the patrol is accelerating.”

She looked at the four stolen cells, then at the coordinates burning beneath the beacon’s signal. A second message had appeared, hidden inside the transmission, repeating in a pattern she could not decode.

The voice from the derelict whispered through the ship’s speakers.

“Survivor secured. Pursuit authorized.”

Mara reached the cockpit and strapped herself into the pilot’s chair.

“Punch the drive,” she said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere they aren’t.”

Juno ignited the engines. The ship tore free of the derelict’s shadow as the patrol began its pursuit.

End of chapter one. 14 more chapters in the full book.