The boarding ramp of the Drifting Truth is five paces ahead, but my feet don’t move.
Behind us, Kavren Yard breathes like a dying machine kept alive out of spite.
From the gantry grating, the settlement sprawls along the shadowed curve of the canyon wall—old atmospheric processors bolted directly into the rock face, water reclamation lines wrapped in greasy cloth, and refinery stacks repurposed into leaning watchtowers. Lights burn beneath patched canvas awnings in dull amber and sulfur-yellow. People move below in heavy coats and filter masks, their shapes blurred by engine heat and rising dust.
A vendor shouts somewhere to the left, his voice rasping through a cracked mask speaker. A docking horn sounds from the upper crane, low and flat, and someone curses at it from an open repair bay.
It is loud, filthy, and entirely uncontrolled.
In the Cradle, every footstep had a designated cadence. Every bulkhead was scrubbed with bleach and monitored by optical nodes. Here, three mechanics argue over an exposed turbine while an unmasked child sits on an ore crate, tossing slag pebbles into a drainage trough.
My field twitches beneath my collarbone, prickling at the sheer volume of unshielded metal and raw static.
ORIN’s voice hums low behind my ear. “Population density: higher than advisable.”
“For who?” I ask quietly.
“Anyone with functional survival instincts.”
“That narrows nothing.”
“A tactical reality.”
Thane stops at the base of the ramp, leaving three meters of open deck between us. He doesn’t reach for my arm, and he doesn’t crowd Arya. He simply plants his boots on the metal and turns, his carbine resting loose across his chest.
“Ramp is clear,” he says. “Take your time.”
Nix hauls a heavy diagnostic kit from the skimmer’s rear rack, walking past us with an effortless, rolling stride. “Main repulsors need twenty minutes to bleed thermal charge before I can cycle the intake filters. If we stay out on this gantry, we’re breathing everyone’s second-hand turbine exhaust.”
I look up the ramp into the ship’s open maw.
To them, it’s shelter. To me, it’s a steel box with magnetic dogs, pressure seals, and automated bulkheads. Every room I have ever inhabited had a locking mechanism on the outside. Once those blast doors slide shut, survival depends entirely on whoever holds the master override.
Arya’s fingers tighten around my thumb.
She doesn’t pull me toward the ship, and she doesn’t retreat toward the dock. She stands close against my left thigh, her small face upturned, watching the shadowed threshold of the cargo bay.
A figure emerges from the ship’s interior, stepping into the yellow light of the airlock.
Tall, broad-chested, with graying hair shaved close at the temples and pale, hard eyes. He wears grease-stained canvas utility overalls over a scarred chest rig, a medical harness slung across his shoulder. His hands are bare, stained with hydraulic oil and old chemical burns.
He stops at the top of the ramp, taking in the scene with a single, sharp scan: Thane’s drawn carbine, Nix’s tool pack, my torn flight suit, and finally the crude crawler wire holding the titanium pins in my right femur.
“Thane,” the man says, his voice like gravel ground between iron plates. “You said two survivors. You didn’t say one was rigged together with industrial salvage and bad intentions.”
“Rhett,” Thane replies, his tone level. “Meet Kaelin and Arya.”
Rhett unclips a handheld medical scanner from his harness and takes half a step down the ramp.
Instantly, my right hand comes up, leveling the dead shock baton like a spear. My good knee flexes, locking my balance, while the field flares hot beneath my ribs. Loose iron shavings on the gantry deck shiver, snapping upright against the grating.
The SpineLock bites into the base of my skull with a warning pulse.
Rhett freezes, hands held waist-high, palms open. His eyes flick from the baton’s scorched emitter to the invisible pressure warping the air around my feet.
“Rhett,” Thane says calmly, without shifting his stance. “Her rules. No sedatives. No restraints. She stays conscious, she keeps her weapons, and no one touches her hardware without her clearance.”
Rhett looks from Thane to me, his brow furrowing beneath the grime. “I’m not looking to harvest you, kid. But that femoral harness is leaking synovial fluid and oxidized copper down your shin. That crawler pin is two millimeters wider than the bone channel. If it torques while you’re walking, it’ll shear the femoral artery before you hit the deck.”
“It hasn’t sheared,” I rasp through the cracked respirator.
“Yet,” Rhett counters. He doesn’t lower his hands, but his tone loses its clinical edge, replaced by the blunt pragmatism of a field mechanic. “I have sterile saline, synthetic skin-grafts, and a hydraulic bench that won't give you blood poisoning. The deck inside is filtered. The air out here is forty percent silica.”
Arya tugs gently on my sleeve.
She looks up at Rhett, then looks back at the open cargo bay. Her dark eyes are unblinking, tracking patterns I can’t see. She gives a single, firm nod.
Inside.
I let out a slow, burning breath. “Saline only. You set the supplies down. I do the work.”
Rhett nods once. “Fair enough. Medbay is two compartments past the airlock, or we can lay the pads right here on the cargo deck where you have clear sightlines to the exit.”
“Cargo deck,” I say.
“Cargo deck it is.”
I take the first step onto the ramp.
The metal grating clangs beneath my feet. The repaired actuator in my right knee catches with a dry, heavy clack, the carbon-steel pin grinding hard against the titanium sleeve. Pain flares sharp and bright into my hip, but I keep my shoulders square, refusing to drag the leg in front of them.
Arya matches my pace stride for stride, her small shoulder tucked under my left hand, anchoring my balance.
We cross the threshold into the Drifting Truth.
The air inside is cool, scrubbed of Ashkaru’s sulfur bite, smelling of ozone, recycled oxygen, and clean machine oil. The sudden drop in airborne grit hits my lungs like cold water; I cough once, a raw, rattling sound that tastes of copper.
Thane follows us in, hitting the manual console beside the hatch. The outer blast doors slide shut with a heavy, pneumatic thud, sealing the bay.
The lock engages.
My heart hammers against my cracked ribs—one-ten, one-twenty. My eyes dart instantly across the cargo deck: four primary support pillars, two overhead crane tracks, a row of tied-down fuel pods, and an open bulkhead leading toward the ventral corridor. No hidden restraint cuffs. No handler stations.
Rhett sets a hard-shell medical case on an empty equipment crate six feet away, flips the latches, and steps back to give me room. Inside sit vacuum-sealed dermal patches, ampoules of sterile wash, surgical shears, and fresh conductive gel.
“Help yourself,” Rhett says, leaning against a support stanchion with his arms crossed. “Start with the upper anchor port. The tissue’s already going gray around the threads.”
I lower myself onto a low composite bench against the bulkhead, keeping my back to the wall and the dead baton across my knees. Arya immediately sits beside me, her small hands reaching for the saline bulb. She strips the seal with practiced efficiency, waiting for my signal.
Before I can reach for the shears, the ship’s primary communication console near the inner bulkhead gives a sharp, high-pitched chirp.
It isn’t the distorted, low-frequency rattle of the yard’s gantry radios.
It is a clean, sharp, digital warble. A triple-tone pulse repeating at exact two-second intervals.
Nix, halfway across the deck with the tool pack, stops dead.
Thane’s head snaps toward the comm panel, his expression instantly hardening. “Nix. What is that?”
Nix drops the tools, crossing to the console in three long strides, fingers flying over the interface. “Signal just hit the yard’s primary relay tower from upper orbit. High-yield carrier wave. It bypassed the local harbor frequencies entirely.”
In my auditory feed, ORIN’s voice drops its dry sarcasm, replaced by pure, flat priority protocol.
“Warning,” ORIN says. “Cervical port detecting direct-band handshake. Signal encryption matches Core naval standard.”
A cold weight drops straight through my stomach.
“Translate,” I whisper.
“The packet is an automated wide-band ping,” ORIN reports, the words landing like hammer blows. “Origin: Retrieval Carrier Vigilant. Query parameter: Pod Bay Fifteen transponder log. Subject designation: QO-7.”
The console on the wall chirps again—closer, louder, vibrating through the hull plating.
They didn't lose our trail in the fire.
The Cradle has found Ashkaru.