Chapter 1: “Dockside Ghosts”

Arrival at the Dock

The shuttle's recycled air tasted of protein slurry and something metallic—burnt capacitors, perhaps. A soft, low hum from the engines shook the shuttle. With every breath, Lena’s perfume—a bittersweet lavender ghost—clung to the air, triggering a phantom ache in my chest. I reached beneath my shirt, fingers brushing the outline of the Star of David pendant. My mother’s gift. A small, silent comfort in the rising tide of unease.

Rebecca Ann Jacobs. I repeated the name, a mantra against doubt. A new name. A new life. Yet Midreach's specters—my children's echoing laughter, Lena’s phantom scent, the lingering ache in my lower abdomen, a steady reminder of a body I was still learning to inhabit—clung to me like dust. I shifted, the discomfort from recent surgery a low thrum beneath my consciousness. The internal demand for dilation, a familiar throb, was a quiet, inconvenient discord. This physical reality anchored me, even as my mind drifted.

Virex-3 Station loomed ahead, skeletal and battered, clinging to a cold rock. Its surface was a patchwork of faded signage, rusted handrails, and layered graffiti. The place didn't just exude stark survival; it screamed of it, its functionality barely hid decay. I passed the flickering neon of the “Rusty Cog,” a bar I vaguely remembered. Lena had dragged me there once—synth-ale, laughter, warmth. Now, the memory felt brittle, like a shattered holovid, the laughter and warmth replaced by a chilling echo. Flickering neon cast shadows across pitted walkways. Dockworkers huddled around a pulsing holo-screen, their faces drawn and hollow. I knew that look; I’d worn it too long. A mangy cat slipped into a shadow as I passed, its eyes twin glints in the gloom.

The air stung with the scent of overheated gravitic coils, a smell I knew from countless engine rooms. Near the bar, mangled machinery lay half-buried in grime, its dim neon light spilling onto tired, sunken faces. Despair seemed to bleed from the walls, a corrosive rust eating into the station’s very structure.

Bay Six loomed ahead, the designation barely legible through layers of grime. And there she was.

This was Indira. Despite her scars, her battered shell, she was beautiful. Flawed, functional, damaged, unyielding. Like me. The hull felt alive beneath my glove, humming with age and wear. Scars crisscrossed her plating—evidence of chaos and survival. I ran a glove along a hull crack. The metal was cold, rough. A low pulse resonated beneath my fingers—the beat of her AGFD coils. Strained systems groaned, a low murmur beneath the ship's drone, a cacophony of minor failures I immediately recognized. A misaligned conduit, maybe. Or a patch-job nearing failure. This ship was a wreck, and I felt a strange pull toward her.

A figure stepped from the shadows near the ramp—young, early twenties maybe. Shoulders hunched. A datapad clutched as if it were a lifeline. His green uniform was too big, sleeves flopping past his wrists.

Denny Kael.

Loadmaster. I remembered from the manifest.

He cleared his throat, the reedy sound too loud in the quiet bay.

“Rebecca Ann Jacobs?” he asked, his voice a notch too high. “I’m Denny Kael. Loadmaster. Captain Vos sent me. To, uh, help you get settled.”

He gestured toward the airlock, then dropped his hand, unsure what to do with it. His knuckles were white around the datapad. A faint scar traced his jaw—a jagged reminder he was more than just nerves. He reminded me of Eli—that same eager-to-please energy, that desperate need to get it right. I felt a pang of protectiveness, an ache I hadn't allowed myself since Midreach.

“Just Rae,” I said, softly. “Lead the way, Denny.”

He nodded quickly, almost jerking, then turned toward the airlock. His shoulders still hunched, but his step carried a tentative spring. A faint, almost ghostly floral scent clung to him—a strange juxtaposition to the ozone and grease saturating the station. I wondered if he noticed it, or if it was another ghost, still present.

I exhaled, a breath of acceptance. I adjusted my grip on my duffel. The weight steadied me. Time to begin. My hands trembled. The deck quivered in response, a sympathetic echo. The engines’ deep pulse through the plates, a relentless presence beneath my feet. It offered no grounding. The past felt heavy. The future, uncertain. But the task was here. The ship was here. And within its bruised hull, a new purpose stirred, a quiet defiance against the chaos of my own broken orbit.

A chill slid down my spine. Her engine's thrum deepened. Denny led me into the airlock. The outer door clanged shut behind us, echoing through the narrow chamber. The inner door hissed open, revealing a utilitarian corridor bathed in flickering fluorescent light.

“This way,” he mumbled, motioning down the corridor. “I’ll give you the quick tour. Vos likes new crew to, uh, know their way around. Even if it’s mostly... corridors.”

He offered a weak smile.

As he pointed out junction boxes and conduits, I tuned him out, listening instead to her. Indira spoke in tremors and pulses, a language only I understood. Her systems sounded tired; her deep resonance was off—subtle, but wrong, like a heart struggling against a hidden strain. The vibration in the deck crept through my boots into my bones, a language I understood better than any voice.

Denny’s voice cut in.

“And this is the main cargo bay access.”

We stepped into a cavernous room lined with scarred metal and empty racks. The air was dense with the scent of past freight—organic rot and solvent.

“We’re loading for the next run in a few hours,” he said, pulling up a manifest. “Standard freight. Nothing too exciting.”

He scrolled.

“A few thousand units of… whatever Vos picked up this cycle.”

I glanced at the display, eyes locking on the fuel calculations at the bottom. Too low. Indira bled power through every conduit and patch seam. Not a glitch, but incompetence—or worse. I filed the numbers away, another puzzle piece in a puzzle I was already desperate to solve.

“Crew quarters are down this deck. You’re in Bay 4. Cramped and utilitarian, but it’s home, right?”

Another uncertain smile.

Home. The word hung, heavy in my mind. We passed a polished panel. My reflection stared back—heart-shaped face, softened features, a gaze full of quiet defiance. The surgical alterations, though delicate, were a steady miracle, a quiet affirmation of who I was. And the ship... maybe she could be home, too. A place where I could finally be myself, unburdened by the past. My toolbox clinked faintly at my side. I slipped a hand inside, fingers closing around my favorite wrench. Its smooth, worn handle fit perfectly in my palm, anchoring me. Each tool held a memory. Echoes of engines and circuits. Ghosts of survival. This—the feel of steel, the dependability of tools—this made me real. Not the hormones. Not the surgery. But the choice to live. Every day. A distinct shiver rippled through the deck, a subtle yet insistent thrum. The ship was old. Older than the logs admitted. Her bones ached with fatigue. The smell of ozone sharpened. Metallic. And beneath it, that haunting floral note pricked at my senses. Faint. A sinister whisper, stirring a deeper unease within me. The engines’ deep drone continued, relentless. I focused on the wrench. On the feel of steel. On the dependability of tools. They were predictable, tangible. Unlike the echoes of my past, or the uncertain future that now stretched before me.

* * *

Meeting the Crew

A single, flickering fluorescent light cast long, harsh shadows across the scarred metal table, highlighting chipped paint and a scorch mark near one corner—a quiet testament to a past, unspoken incident. Dust motes floated in the sickly yellow glow of the display console. The air felt dense with recycled staleness, undercut by someone’s overzealous cologne—an eager attempt to disguise the metallic tang of old grease and the lingering scent of rehydrated beans. The chill of the table beneath my palms cut through the residual warmth of my thermal layers. A low, barely perceptible throb ran through the floorplates, a faint discord under the engines’ steady drone, a reminder of the ship’s underlying stress. Machines were supposed to be predictable. Break them, fix them. People were never that simple.

Vos commanded the head of the table, a chipped mug in one hand, a datapad in the other. Whatever filled the mug was opaque, swirling like a miniature galaxy. His worn flight jacket, half-zipped and stained, reeked faintly of stale coffee and something acrid—maybe burnt wiring. He drummed a steady rhythm on the datapad’s casing, fingers betraying an unease his voice hadn’t yet revealed. His gaze swept over each of us in turn—a silent interrogation. It lingered on me, a moment too long, calculating, as if he already saw the storm I carried within me. I hated that feeling, the sense of being seen beyond the carefully constructed walls I’d built.

Denny hunched over his own datapad, knuckles pale, eyes flicking between the screen and the others. He tugged at a loose thread on his uniform sleeve, fidgeting in the thickening quiet. The scent of ozone hung near him—a whisper of the ship’s stress, or perhaps, of his own anxiety. He peeked at me, his expression a nervous hope, a soft plea for reassurance. Mik Koba, cross-armed and scowling, sat opposite me, polishing a wrench with methodical precision. He shot a glance at me—a challenge in his eyes, his grip tightening on the tool. I sensed his discomfort, the metallic tang in the air sharpening around him as his jaw worked silently. A gleaming, custom-modified tool hung at his hip, a testament to his exacting, unyielding nature.

Jaime Velasquez leaned lazily against the bulkhead, a bag of peanuts half-eaten in his lap. He scanned the room with bored amusement, eyes sharp despite his posture. A small, faded tattoo—a bird in flight—peeking from beneath his sleeve. He crunched a peanut and tossed the shell, missing the bin entirely. His smirk as he met my eyes bespoke curiosity more than welcome, a quiet question lurking behind the casual facade.

Tala Yorrin stood at the back, arms crossed, gaze fixed. She didn’t blink much. When my eyes met hers, I felt a muted recognition, an acknowledgement of shared burdens. Around her neck hung a small Star of David, silver, dulled from time but not meaning, a subtle anchor in a chaotic world. My mother had given me one, tucked away in my kit. A connection to a life I’d left behind, but a part of me nonetheless. Lavender and antiseptic clung to her like a second skin, a scent both clinical and oddly comforting. Lena had loved lavender. The thought was a faint ache, a ghost in my periphery. She didn’t move when Vos began to speak. I sensed she already knew what was coming, her composure a premonition of the challenges ahead.

Vos cleared his throat, voice like gravel.

“All right. We’ve got a three-leg haul—station to colony, colony to refinery, refinery back here. Nothing exotic. Smooth run, we’re back in five days.”

Vos tapped a few keys. The display console flickered, then projected a three-dimensional map of the jump corridor. A red warning zone throbbed menacingly across part of the route, a silent scream of danger in the void. This wasn’t just a supply run. This was a calculated risk, a gamble with our lives. Another one.

Jaime yawned, loud and theatrical.

“Five days is ambitious, Cap. You seen this corridor lately? We’re not the only ones desperate enough to cut through it. Turbulence near Sector 7’s been spiking. Gravitics are a mess.”

He caught my eye, a grin tugging at his mouth, but his eyes held a flicker of genuine concern.

“Besides, you know how I feel about ambitious schedules.”

He tossed a look at Mik, some unspoken game between them, but Mik didn’t rise to it. He just stared harder at his wrench, his jaw clenched.

Vos ignored the jab. His eyes stayed on the datapad.

“Cargo’s sealed. No special handling. Don’t open it. Don’t scan it. Don’t ask.”

The words dropped like stones. The engines’ deep throb underfoot intensified, filling the sudden quiet. The crates were sealed with custom locks I had never seen before, and a faint scent—Lena’s scent, impossibly—permeated the air. It was everywhere now, a ghost that clung to the air like a shroud. I wished I could shake it, but it was a part of me, a steady reminder. This same floral note sharpened whenever Vos mentioned the cargo. I had already noted the discrepancies in the manifest. I held my tongue—for now. A faint shift in weight near the aft bulkheads—a slight tremor, barely discernible—sent a shiver down my spine. Something felt off.

“Questions?” Vos asked, with the tone of someone who didn’t actually want any.

Silence answered. The whir of a fan buzzed in the stillness. The engines’ deep throb underfoot intensified, filling the sudden quiet.

I waited. Ten seconds. No one else stepped forward.

“The fuel calculation,” I said, evenly. “It won’t hold, Captain. The intake bypass has a weld offset. We’ll bleed power through the third cycle unless we recalibrate.”

My words were deliberate and precise, laced with a confidence that masked my inner unease. I didn’t look like the kind of woman who wins bar fights or fixes fusion cores, and that suited me just fine. I was small enough to slip through crawlspaces most crew wouldn’t dare enter, and I had hands strong enough to pull a broken conduit loose from its mount—but gentle enough to wire it back together without frying a circuit. The thought of my own body, once a source of constant dysphoria, now a tool of strength and resilience, was a subtle, private victory. No one here knew the full story of how I’d come to occupy this frame, and I didn’t plan on telling them. It was mine, a secret comfort.

I tapped my datapad. Just once. Soft. Measured. I felt the weight of all eyes on me.

Mik’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing.

“Already accounted for,” he responded, his voice edged with blatant condescension. “You weren’t on the last run, kid. That line’s stable.”

“It was,” I replied, my voice calm and unwavering. “Then the buffer pressure shifted during the last jump. I checked the readings myself.”

Another tap on my datapad. Faint. Certain. Mik didn’t look at me.

“You’re new,” he said flatly, his voice a low growl. “Maybe ease off the diagnostics until you’ve walked more than one corridor. Or learned the difference between a sensor ghost and a real problem.”

Vos raised a hand.

“If she says she saw something, check it. Quietly.”

Mik didn’t move.

Neither did I.

Then Tala spoke, her voice cutting through the tension, cool and clear.

“I’ll run the scan with her.”

She nodded in my direction. Just once. A simple gesture that landed like a flag planted in shared ground.

“No harm double-checking.”

Mik grunted.

“Knock yourselves out.”

He looked away, his shoulders slumping in defeat. Vos waved us off.

“Dismissed.”

Chairs scraped against the metal floor. Jaime clapped my shoulder as he passed.

“Next time, bring popcorn,” he whispered, a flash of genuine amusement in his eyes. “That was fun.”

He grinned, then vanished down the corridor.

I adjusted my grip on my datapad. The tremor beneath my boots deepened, as if the ship itself held its breath, awaiting the outcome. Tala and I walked in silence, the engines a low hum around us.

“You didn’t have to cover for me,” I murmured, a hint of surprise in my voice.

“I wasn’t,” Tala replied. Her gaze remained forward, her composure a kind of anchor in the turbulent air.

“I saw the way you looked at those numbers, Rae. You don’t just see what’s there; you see what should be there. And that’s a rare thing.”

“You believe me?” I asked, a fragile hope stirring.

She shrugged.

“I believe you believe you’re right. That’s enough to look.”

Not warmth. Not dismissal, either. That, I realized, was something worth carrying into the dark. Something worth building on.

* * *

A Quiet Space

My quarters were small—two meters long, one and a half wide—tucked behind a panel that barely passed for a door. The bulkhead resonated with the persistent pulse of gravitic field regulators, a low, insistent hum that vibrated through my bones.

My focus had to remain laser-sharp. The thought was a familiar, bitter joke I told myself, a reminder of the daily, mundane realities of my chosen path.

I dropped my duffel. The worn canvas whispered across the thin metal floor, its roughness comforting—like engine grease under fingernails or the cramped warmth of Midreach maintenance shafts. I set my toolbox beside it. The weight was reassuring. Inside, each tool bore the specters of countless projects: a plasma cutter with a custom-modified grip, a multi-tool with a chipped bit, wrenches etched with the memory of my hands. Extensions of me. Proof I could build, fix, survive.

They are my anchors, I thought, my steady in a world of endless change.

A subtle quiver rippled through the floorplates—a discord beneath the engines’ steady hum. I felt it in my spine. I sat on the thin mattress, the cold of the floor pressing through my layers. The walls creaked as the ship settled into idle, the groan of tired metal finding rhythm. It clashed with the metallic tang I’d grown used to. I swallowed against the rising nausea. A flash of disorientation blurred my senses. Then a memory: Lena, humming as she braided Maya’s hair, lavender scent dense in the air. It hit like a pulse of pain, a phantom limb. I closed my eyes. The ship's ambient hum enveloped me, a steady backdrop. The pressure deep in my abdomen pulsed—grim, accustomed. I leaned into Indira’s thrumming heart, willing it to steady mine. Another memory surfaced: Dry Dock 47, the sterile gleam of surgical lighting on a cracked fusion core. My hands steady, my breath even. The satisfaction of precision. The deck quivered again—more urgently this time. The underlying hum felt lived-in, older than the ship's logs admitted. And again, that artificial floral note—a specter’s waft slicing through oil and dust like a whisper from the past, an unsettling reminder of a scent that should be impossible to find here.

A soft whine rose from a nearby access panel. Barely audible yet insistent. I reached instinctively for my multi-tool. The panel’s latch was corroded, the screws half-stripped. A simple fix. But also a message, in its way—one more indicator of how patched and weary this vessel truly was. The floor's pulse grew firmer, more insistent, beneath me. I couldn’t ignore it. The whine was too deliberate, too knowing.

I worked quickly, my headlamp casting hard shadows as I removed the panel. Behind it, tucked amid tangled wires, a narrow compartment lay hidden. Deliberate. The artificial scent thickened, as did my pulse.

Inside, sealed in a nearly invisible plastic bag, was a small, withered sprig of lavender. I froze. Not a coincidence. Not a malfunction. A message. The same scent that had haunted the docking bay. The same scent Lena wore. My chest tightened, breath catching somewhere between grief and disbelief. My fingers trembled as I lifted the brittle sprig. Dry petals crackled in my hand. A memory surged: Lena’s laughter, Maya giggling, Eli’s hands in mine. Grief ambushed me, silent and brutal. I slipped the lavender into my pocket, where the plastic crinkled softly against the worn metal of my tools—my anchors. My heart pounded in response, the ship seeming to hold its breath in eerie synchronization.

I reached into my duffel and retrieved the photo album. The leather cover, worn smooth by time, grounded me. My fingers hesitated on the clasp before opening it. Lena’s smile. Maya’s eyes. Eli, wrapped around my leg, beaming. A snapshot of a universe that no longer existed. My throat constricted. But my hands were steady.

I closed the album and placed it gently beside the lavender. I had to stay focused. I had to keep going.

For them, I thought, and for me.

I looked up, catching my reflection in the small mirror affixed to the back of the door. The face looking back was mine, clear, strong, real—no longer broken or hiding. My heart-shaped face, softened features, the subtle curve of my nose, all a testament to the skilled surgeons and the years of hormones. This woman, reflected back at me, was a testament to my choices, to the agonizing journey of becoming myself. I had chosen authenticity over comfort, truth over silence. This was me. Fully me. And for the first time in a long time, the woman staring back felt worthy of love. Rebecca Ann Jacobs. A new name. A new orbit. All the effort to transition, all the pain, all the loss... it was worth it. This face, this body, this life... it was truly mine, irrevocably mine. A subtle, fierce triumph.

The deck pulsed again, its rhythm growing more insistent beneath the engines’ steady thrum. The ship’s pulse resonated beneath me like a warning, a frantic drumbeat against the silence.

The walls were too thin. No soundproofing. Just a flimsy latch pretending to be security. A scratch along the bulkhead caught my eye—small, almost hidden beneath layers of grime. I traced it, my fingers recognizing the texture, accustomed like the handles of my tools. These tools were my anchors. When everything else had shattered, they’d remained. In a world full of shifting names, false starts, and fragile truths, they had always been mine. This wasn’t about my body. This was about the ship. The hum intensified, the floor vibrating with barely-contained strain. I reattached the panel, the lavender's artificial scent lingering like a question with no clear answer, unsettling me. This ship had secrets. And I intended to uncover them. Indira’s engines pulsed beneath me, a persistent presence, a mirror of my own resolve. I set the timer—twenty-five minutes. Routine, muscle memory, survival. I laid out the sterile towel, white against gray, a ritual as mundane as it was necessary. Each movement was precise, practical. Nothing glamorous, nothing performative. Just maintenance—like changing a bandage, cleaning a filter, living. When I slid the dilator into place, my breath caught—not from pain, though it pinched—but from the sheer absurdity.

We can bend light. We can map wormholes. Yet we still fix this with a piece of molded plastic, I thought, the bitter taste in my mouth part frustration, part grief.

A reminder of how far we’d come—and how far we hadn’t. When it was over, I sat back against the cold bulkhead, legs stretched out, letting the ache quiet. The timer beeped. Done. In the viewport, my reflection stared back. The same woman, the same fight. Now, clarity. The face was mine. And I wasn’t running anymore. Not from my past. Not from my body. Not from the truth that simmered beneath the ship’s skin.

* * *

The Heat Signature

Indira’s AGFD drive, a deep, constant hum, vibrated through the deck plates and echoed deep in my bones. The engine room was a symphony of controlled chaos: gleaming conduits twisted through the walls like arteries, plasma regulators buzzed, and the gravitic coils vibrated with purpose.

Unlike Midreach Station’s sterile, over-sanitized bays, this space felt alive. Raw. Scarred. The walls bore the marks of hard-won survival—dents, burn streaks, mismatched welds. Some conduit seals gleamed with fresh epoxy, others flaked with corrosion, barely holding together. Functional, yes, but only just. The engine’s heartbeat felt stressed, like a creature pushing against the limits of its own endurance, a desperate throb against the rising strain. I reached out, running my gloved fingers along a smooth conduit near the main buffer. A faint, discordant shiver echoed beneath my fingertips—imperceptible to anyone without years of experience. Cold metal met the heat radiating off nearby systems. My heart echoed that rhythm, a quiet urgency building under my ribs. The rising keen of an overworked fan sliced through the ambient drone, and the shiver in the floorplates grew more pronounced—still faint, but no longer ignorable. The very air seemed to hum with unspoken dread.

This wasn’t just a mechanical anomaly. This was a message.

I turned to the ISAC—Integrated Systems Analysis Console. The screen flickered, glitching, its usual comforting green indicators replaced by a violent wall of red bars that screamed silently from the display. Erratic. Disjointed. But the trend was clear.

This wasn’t a sensor error. This was a breach. A significant one. A deliberate act.

The emergency lighting above flickered, casting distorted shadows across the engine room. Every familiar surface now felt foreign and threatening. Mik stood across the space, back to me, polishing a wrench with unnatural, almost obsessive focus. His sarcastic calm gone, a stiffness in his shoulders, a stillness in his movements replaced it. He listened. Watched. Waited.

Something felt deeply, profoundly wrong, a chill that had nothing to do with the engine room's temperature.

A sharp, metallic keening sliced through the background hum—a frequency only someone tuned to the pulse of a ship would notice. A warning. I tracked it to one of the main conduits—its surface faintly quivering, the heat signature rising beyond expected thresholds. Then the scent assaulted me—faint at first, then undeniably present. That thin, artificial floral note, like burnt plastic draped in cheap perfume, the same I’d first caught in the docking bay. It was wrong. Memory stirred, disturbed and just out of reach, of Lena's perfume, impossibly present. The engine's deeper resonance intensified, or maybe I just felt it more.

Ten minutes late.

I turned toward the access panel, my steps measured. A gravitational anomaly brushed past—minute, yet unnatural. It made my stomach drop. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just wear and tear. Something was here. Interfering.

Near the panel, the perfume-like aroma thickened, becoming oppressive. A cold knot coiled in my gut. My abdomen pulsed again—an unwelcome reminder of vulnerability. I tamped it down. Pain was a distraction, irrelevant. Machines, at least, were predictable. They break, they can be fixed. Human relationships, human bodies... those were far harder. The weight of my own body, once a source of constant dysphoria, now a personal, private victory. But it was also a constant, intimate demand for care, one that I sometimes resented. Now was not the time. My focus was the ship, the crew, the future.

I reached for the panel. The surface was cool, smooth—too smooth. Beneath its surface, a faint, irregular quiver echoed the ship's pulse, but with a discordant rhythm that felt entirely out of place. My hand hovered over the latch. My breath hitched. My heart raced against Indira’s steady thrum.

I pulled it open. The compartment was narrow and hot, a stifling space that seemed to swallow the light. Wires snaked through it like cancerous veins, capacitors pressed tight against the bulkhead. One frayed wire sparked intermittently near a cluster of delicate components. A single short here could trigger cascading failures, a domino effect of destruction. My instincts screamed.

This wasn’t just unstable.

This was sabotage.

The scent, like dying flowers, became almost suffocating, clinging to the superheated air and making my skin crawl with a visceral dread.

I leaned in.

The construction didn’t match the rest of Indira—connectors too clean, too ordered, designed to look chaotic, to mask something deeper. Someone had hidden something.

I activated my portable decryption unit—an old, heavily modified ISAC salvage. I set it down, isolating it from the ship’s systems. Its soft whirr blended with the ambient drone of the room. Scans began. Standard encryption? No. Too easy.

This was something else.

A misdirect. A time-waster.

Not an accident.

Deliberate.

The air pressed tighter with each failed scan. The sickly-sweet aroma, now thick and almost nauseating, permeated the confined space. I wiped the sweat from my brow, heart pounding. Someone had planned this. Had laid a false trail.

Then—progress. The decryption unit detected a thermal fluctuation within the panel structure—an embedded signal, a key.

I tweaked the parameters.

And the encryption fell apart.

A data cascade appeared on the screen—logs, schematics, timestamps. A final entry chilled my blood, causing a wave of nausea to wash over me:

“Floral scent activated. Backup protocol engaged.”

My heart lurched. I reached into the compartment and extracted the chip, fingertips trembling despite themselves. The smooth surface was cool, reassuringly real. Grease smudged one edge—fresh, recently touched. Someone had touched this. A lingering trace of that sickly-sweet aroma clung to the chip itself, a sickening signature. I sealed it in a protective case.

Around me, the room seemed to grow quieter. Denser. I examined the wiring again—too neat, too ordered, designed to look chaotic, to mask something deeper. The heat was rising, and beneath it, a sudden drop in ambient pressure. Not enough to trigger alarms—but enough to raise every hair on my arms.

A deep oscillation reverberated through the deck once more—faint, yet undeniably strengthening.

I traced the panel’s edge, noting a faint scratch near the latch. Hidden under grime. Almost missed it.

Another compartment?

Another message?

A memory surged—Midreach, surgical lights reflecting off chrome, my hands moving with clinical precision. Lena’s pulse under my fingertips, the sterile bite of antiseptic. I pushed it away. This wasn’t about the past. This was now. This was about survival. I reattached the panel with practiced ease, movements clean and controlled. The metal sealed with a soft click, but the questions it left echoed louder than any alarm. The phantom floral scent still clung to the air—a ghost of what it had been, yet persistently disturbing. I glanced back at the console. Red bars still blinked in defiance. I looked down at the data chip, feeling its weight in my pocket—its secrets, its warnings.

This ship was hiding something.

Someone had buried a message in its bones.

I wouldn’t let it stay buried. Not again. I wouldn’t waste the second chance fate had grudgingly offered me—not for myself, not for this crew. Not after everything. This wasn’t just damage control; it was a desperate search for answers in a universe determined to keep its secrets.

© 2025 by Grace Ann Hansen