"Harrow, Harrow, this is Marrin, you reading me?"
My stomach drops straight into my boots. Of course. Of course, he's out here. The Choke draws desperate men the way a bad wound draws flies, and Jex Marrin has been desperate for as long as I've known him.
I thumb the channel. "I'm reading, Marrin."
"Vane." His voice is wire-tight, all teeth. "You better not be looking at the same signal I'm looking at, Vane. You better be on your way back to Orun for dinner."
"I'm not."
"Vane. Vane. This is mine. I picked up that ping two minutes ago, maybe three, and I'm already burning for it."
"I picked it up eight minutes ago," I inform him, keeping my voice cool and steady despite the adrenaline spiking in my chest.
"Liar," he spits back immediately.
"Pull my scan log if you want, Marrin. I've got timestamps to prove it." I can practically picture his scowl, knowing how much he hates being outpaced. Jex Marrin is twenty-nine and rope-thin, all nervous energy and sharp elbows, with sunken cheeks that make his eyes look too big for his face, wearing a patched pressure-suit that is honestly an insult to the word. We’ve crossed orbits four or five times on the edge of different wrecks, and every time it’s the same choreography. He pushes in. I hold the line. A dozen petty escalations that end with both of us walking away poorer than we started.
"Back off, Marrin." His breath is coming hard. He's running in his suit. I can hear him banging through a hatch on his end. "Back off, Vane, I mean it."
"You back off," I snap in return.
"I picked up that ping before you did," he insists, the frantic energy returning to his voice.
"That is a lie that would embarrass a child, Marrin."
"Vane. I swear on every scrap of air in this suit, if you cut my burn, I am gonna ram you."
"With what, Marrin? That rust bucket you call a hopper? Your thrusters couldn't ram a drifting crate."
Static. A breath. Another. "You're bluffing. You haven't even scanned her yet."
"I've scanned her three times. Pull your own reading if you don't believe me."
"I'm gonna beat you to her, Vane," he laughs, a breathless, thin, and ugly sound. "I am gonna gut that hull before you clearthe last burn. You're gonna watch, and you're going to remember the day Jex Marrin got the drop on you."
The channel ends with a harsh pop, leaving me staring at the dead comms panel.
"K-Seven," I bark without taking my eyes off the screen. "Track his hopper."
"Tracking. Battered Class-Three, subcontractor plating, single occupant. Intercept trajectory with target vessel. Estimated arrival four minutes."
"Ahead of us?" I curse under my breath, my fingers tightening on the controls.
"Approximately ninety seconds ahead," K-Seven reports with agonizing precision.
"Damn it. Damn him," I hiss, slamming my palm against the dashboard in a rare flash of frustration.
"Unit is unable to damn him on your behalf. Unit lacks the appropriate subroutine," the drone offers, bobbing slightly as if apologizing for its programming limits.
"You are not helping, K."
"Noted," it chirps back, instantly returning to its scan logic.
It takesa sluggish crawl to close the distance, and by the time the warship resolves on my forward scope, my mouth has gone dry.
She is huge.
Dwarfing even a dreadnought, her hull stretches out long and lean, mimicking an ancient blade left out in the dark to rust. Her hull gleams matte black against the starfield, broken only by a fractured wound along her port flank where something tore a ragged hole clean through three decks.