The Obsidian Wraith coasted into position like a shadow joining another. Its sleek black hull latched seamlessly to the courier vessel's aft airlock with a soft thump and a hiss of magnetized seals locking into place. Docking clamps extended, holding firm. No reaction from the drifting ship.
Inside the Wraith's airlock, Ethan secured the last of his pressurized suit's seals with practiced fingers. He reached for his gear, the slimline laser pistol holstered on his right thigh, the thermal combat dagger across his lower back, and the Astral Slayer attached magnetically to the reinforced shoulder mount. He didn't plan on using the blade, but instinct demanded it come with him.
"Iris," he said, adjusting his helmet display, "lock systems down the moment I breach. If anything triggers from the courier, kill power to the docking tunnel immediately."
"Understood," Iris replied. "Vitals stable. Suit seal confirmed. You are clear to proceed, Captain."
With a breath, Ethan disengaged the airlock.
The metal tunnel extended ahead, ribbed and dimly lit by the soft blue of emergency illumination. The Wraith's internal light cut off behind him as the system recognized full breach status. The hatch at the far end of the tunnel loomed like a lid over a coffin. Ethan moved forward in careful, controlled steps.
The courier's internal airlock resisted at first, but then opened with a metallic groan as if something inside finally gave up.
Immediately, the smell hit him.
Even through the filters, ozone, blood, rot, and scorched metal. His visor's HUD flared briefly before stabilizing: Atmosphere: Trace oxygen. CO₂ buildup nearing unsafe levels. Power levels: 12%. Life support: Failing.
Ethan stepped into the corridor, boots clicking against the deck plates.
Lights flickered overhead, casting stuttering shadows that danced around bulkheads and doorframes. The ship had clearly seen action, deep scoring ran down one side of the main hallway wall, and a dark spray pattern dried into the left bulkhead confirmed what the sharp copper scent already suggested.
Blood. Recently spilled.
He moved deeper.
A flickering console at his right displayed fractured navigational data, useless and fragmented. Emergency strobe lights blinked through ceiling slits, throwing red across the tight walls in steady, heart-like pulses. The whole interior felt wrong, claustrophobic, compressed, like it was holding its breath.
And then he found the first body.
Face-down near the corridor's junction point, armored in Federation courier security gear. Female. Blaster wound through the midsection, point-blank. Holster empty. No ID on the armor plate. Someone had stripped it.
Another body waited further in, slumped against the wall. Older man, silver streaks in his beard, uniform marked with courier insignia. Throat cut. His hand still gripped a pistol, its battery drained to null. A desperate last stand.
Ethan crouched beside the corpse and examined the surroundings. The doors leading off the hallway were sealed, the bridge further ahead looked dark, and to the right, a maintenance corridor ended in what looked like a sealed blast hatch.
He extended his senses.
Breathing slowed.
He let go of the constant noise in his mind, let it recede like water pulling from a shore, and pushed outward with a focused pulse of his own presence.
The dead held no echoes. But something else did.
A faint warmth. Buried.
Below.
His eyes snapped open.
He moved down the hall, following a barely visible panel seam set against the wall, no lights, no labels. Just an irregularity. Ethan pulled the thermal dagger free and slid it into the groove. Heat flowed briefly through the metal, weakening the seal. The panel hissed and clicked open.
Behind it, a ladder dropped into a narrow vertical shaft.
A hidden compartment.
He descended quickly, scanning as he went.
At the bottom was a reinforced door with a low-powered biometric lock, just barely functional. He extended a hand toward the surface and concentrated.
His psionic sense bled through the mechanism, trickling into the layers behind it, pushing gently at the circuits until the lock blinked twice and opened. A nifty trick he had recently learned while experimenting with his psychic power.
Inside was a cold, silent room, lit only by a single ceiling strip flickering in and out. At its center stood a cryo-pod.
A man lay within it.
Older. Gaunt. Clean-shaven. Worn high class civilian uniform. Eyes shut in frozen suspension. The pod's biosignal was weak, but stable. Cryo integrity held, barely.
Ethan stepped closer.
The data tag on the cryo-unit had been scratched out. Entirely. Deep gouges scored the tag down to the frame, and a thin coating of black adhesive attempted to cover the serial port.
Whoever put this man here didn't want him found, but also probably didn't want him dead instantly.
"Found something," Ethan muttered. "Hidden subdeck, one occupant in cryo."
"Understood," Iris replied in his ear. "Initiating support capsule deployment for extraction."
But even as she said it, her voice shifted tone.
"Captain. Multiple drive signatures detected. Five clicks. Approaching fast from the far end of the belt."
Ethan's eyes sharpened instantly, muscles tensing under the armor seal of his suit.
"Pirate signature pattern?" he asked, already halfway up the shaft.
"Confirmed. Three vessels. Lightly armed. Configurations match border-scan records for Ravarr Drift Corsairs."
That name made his jaw tighten. The Ravarr Corsairs were as all bottom-feeders among pirates, sloppy, opportunistic and desperate. But that desperation was exactly what made them dangerous. Like starving hounds. Fast to bite. Quick to burn.
He scaled the last rungs of the access shaft, boots hitting metal hard. "Decouple the tunnel. Prep evasive."
"Affirmative. Atmospheric seals retracting. Energy shields charging."
The whisper-hiss of the tunnel separating had already begun by the time he emerged back into the main corridor. The low red emergency lights made it feel like the ship was bleeding out around him, cold, vacant, and already dead.
Ethan sprinted past the slumped bodies, his footsteps muffled by the padded plating of his pressure suit. He barely glanced at the scorched walls or the flickering lights overhead. No time for reflection.
The Obsidian Wraith's boarding corridor was retracting now, magnetic clamps releasing with audible clicks as its matte-black frame flexed. The tunnel hissed as it disconnected fully with a final metallic thunk, the two ships breaking contact like a breath held too long finally released.
He launched himself across the narrow gap just as the connection disengaged. Gravity aligned. Boots hit deck. Iris sealed the Wraith's airlock behind him with a firm shudder of reinforced plating. The Wraith was alive beneath his feet, systems humming, weapons warming, flight AI shifting gears.
"Pirates will be within scan lock range in less than ninety seconds," Iris announced, voice sharp but measured.
Ethan pulled off his helmet, unhooking it with a twist and hiss of pressurized air. Sweat beaded at his temples, but his breathing was already slowing. His body was used to this, the spike of alert, the shift into action.
His hands moved with precision, returning the helmet to the wall cradle, fingers already tapping the command panel for weapon status.
"Arm all primary turrets. Load one EMP charge into countermeasure bank."
"Confirmed. Weapons hot. Hull integrity nominal. Energy Shields at full. Targeting uplink engaged."
He moved through the narrow corridor of the ship, the soft ambient lighting switching to combat mode, a cooler, focused hue. As he entered the cockpit, the stars came back into view, wide and unfiltered.
And there they were, three burn trails in the black, arcing out of the belt like predators on the hunt. The pirate vessels were small but sleek, jagged, and fast. Their hulls were painted in asymmetrical tones to scatter sensors, and their heat signatures were barely above minimum. The work of retrofitted shielding systems.
But Iris had already tagged their profiles.
RAVARR CORSAIR VESSEL 1: SCAV-BEAK CLASS.
VESSEL 2: UNKNOWN MODIFIED FREIGHTER, ARMED.
VESSEL 3: INTERCEPTOR TYPE, HIGH VELOCITY.
Ethan dropped into the pilot seat. The leather molded instantly to his frame, the tactile pads at the console glowing softly beneath his fingers. The mug of beverage still floated nearby in its magnetic ring. He gave it a glance, still sealed, still waiting. He left it untouched.
Outside, the courier ship hung silently, dead in space, silhouetted against the faint starscape. Beyond it, the Corsairs were spreading out in a flanking formation, trying to box in both Ethan's ship and the derelict.
He looked past the courier, eyes narrowing on the pirates.
"They're not here for salvage," he said quietly.
"Their vector matches a preprogrammed intercept approach," Iris added. "Telemetry suggests they knew that ship was here."
Ethan tapped a few toggles.
"Let's make sure they don't get what they came for."
He angled the Obsidian Wraith slightly to the side, rotating on its internal thrusters to present a narrower profile and break the sensor lock attempts. The tactical overlay blinked across the screen, range indicators, velocity predictions, fire arcs. His hand hovered over the manual targeting controls, ready to intervene if needed.
But more than that, his instincts were alive now, sharpened. His psionic sense wasn't focused, but it hummed beneath the surface, like a sixth sense murmuring, danger is near.
He looked one more time at the courier. At the memory of the cryo-pod, the hidden room, and the bodies left behind.
Whatever was in that pod, whoever, it wasn't meant to be found by these bastards.
And Ethan Walker, for reasons he hadn't fully figured out yet, had just made himself a wall in their way.
He exhaled slowly.
"Weapons hot," he said. "Let's see what the Wraith can do in battle."
The ship hummed around him, ready. Systems aligned. Vents cycled. Lights narrowed to red.
Outside the viewport, the Corsairs closed in.
Ethan watched them come, eyes resolute, grip steady. This would be his first real fight in space, and he couldn't deny that he was slightly nervous.
But if they wanted a fight… he'd give them one.