"—Korr says the human girl is the key," another voice cuts in, colder than the rest. "If there’s a Reaper still breathing in there, she’s our leverage. We get her, we get the codes. If she resists, we hand her over to the gene-markets as a 'slightly used' Sovereign-saturated asset. Either way, Korr wants her alive until the locks are cracked."
Korr.
The name hits me like a punch to the sternum. Captain Rhydan Korr. Korr the Cutter. Every salvager in the Fringe knows that name—and every salvager with half a brain stays out of his flight path. I've never met him, but I've heard the stories and seen the wanted posters. Stocky, battle-scarred, with a shaved head and one cybernetic eye that glints blue in the dark. He built his fleet by boarding vulnerable scavengers, stripping their ships, and selling the crews for parts—literal, biological parts—to the gene markets on the outer rim. He runsa dozen ships, maybe more, scattered across the rim, running jobs and raids simultaneously. The four to eight heading our way are just the ones he could pull together fast—crewed by the kind of people who think airlock executions are a team-building exercise.
And he is heading straight for us. "K-Seven, how many ships?" The drone's lenses cycle rapidly, processing the signal data.
"Unit is parsing multiple transmission sources. Minimum four vessels. Maximum eight. Signal degradation prevents an exact count. Estimated arrival based on signal strength: twelve to eighteen hours."
My heart hammers. Four to eight ships. A full scavenger fleet, armed, organized, and hunting a Reaper vessel that Korr already knows is intact.
Virex Primedrifted untouched in the deep dark for centuries, its energy signature completely masked. I only found it on a rogue, one-in-a-million thermal blip. But the second I forced the airlock and breached the hull, the ship's dormant defense protocols must have triggered a system-wide energy spike. It wasn't a distress beacon—it was a flare. A thousand-year-old lighthouse illuminating the dark, and Korr’s scanners would have caught the massive pulse the moment it lit up the sector grid.
Pulling up the external sensor array through the panel—the deepest system I've touched yet—the interface violently resists, flashing a crimson warning. But then the mark on my chest flares, a deep, burning ache that echoes in the console beneath my hands. Instead of the ship deciding, it'sverifyingthe bond tethering me to its Commander. The red script shudders, yielding to the biological rhythm in my veins. The text translates itself, rearranging into a grid of concentric circles radiating outward from our position. I let out a breath I didn't know I washolding. There, along the perimeter of the grid, a cluster of heat signatures. Faint, distant, but moving. Moving toward us with the persistent, deliberate speed of predators who know their prey is already caught.
"Play the rest of it," I demand softly.
K-Seven scrolls through the captured signal and pulls up more fragments and more distorted voices.
"—Selra says she can crack the hull locks if we get close enough. She's worked Reaper-adjacent tech before, says the neural lattice has a back door if you?—"
Another voice cuts in, "—what about the human signal? The biometric ping the ship keeps broadcasting?—"
"—Korr says she's leverage. If there's a Reaper still breathing in there, the human is either bait or a hostage, and either way, she's?—"
The transmission cuts to static.
Pressing my hand flat against the wall, I sit in the alcove and feelVirex Primedrum beneath my palm. My brain runs calculations faster than K-Seven's processor, drawing on my intimate knowledge of how scavenger fleets operate. I used to be one—a solo operator, at the bottom of the food chain—but I understand the math. Nobody comes this far out into dead space for a maybe. Korr has hard data. He has the ship's hull signature. He has my biometric ping—the oneVirex Primebroadcasts as part of its atmospheric regulation, marking me as an organic presence on board. And he has Selra, who claims she can break into a Reaper warship.
"K-Seven. Can you trace the signal origin? How long have they been tracking us?"
The drone’s chassis rotates, its lenses cycling through color spectrums beyond my perception. "Signal trajectory analysis suggests the fleet has been following an emissions trail for approximately seventy-two hours.Virex Prime'sreactorproduces a thermal signature detectable at extreme ranges. Commander Draevik's recent recalibration of the autonomic systems generated a power surge that may have amplified the signature temporarily."
Seventy-two hours. Three days. The exact window Draevik has been running from me, sleeping in the stasis chamber, flushing his systems. His recalibration sent up a flare, and Korr caught it.
I want to laugh. I want to scream. The one time Draevik tries to get his head on straight, he accidentally broadcasts our position to the most dangerous salvage crew in the Fringe.
The infinite bounty. The data I found in the ship's manifest, the one that named Draevik as the sole surviving officer of the First Sovereign Legion. If Korr has even a fraction of that intel, this is the biggest payday in salvage history. He would burn through a dozen crews to get his hands on this ship. He would burn through a hundred.
And he thinks I'm leverage.
Tearing the blanket off the shelf, I break into a full sprint, letting the corridors blur past me. My boots hammering the bio-mat flooring, the ship's bioluminescence flaring to life ahead of me in a frantic cascade of violet and amber.Virex Primecan feel my panic—the mark is throbbing, a hot, insistent rumble that matches the ship’s own reactor throb. Every door I approach cycles open before I reach it, the ship clearing my path with an urgency I've never seen from it.
"Draevik!" The syllables sprint down the passage, shattering into a thousand tiny, metallic shards that rattle against the ceiling and then vanish into the dark. "Draevik, where are you?"
K-Seven zooms ahead of me, its thrusters whining at maximum output. "Commander's heat signature is located on the bridge. Deck Two, Sector Three."
The bridge. I have never been to the bridge. He's never let me. I don't care.
I take the maintenance shaft K-Seven highlights—a vertical climb that feels like a breeze compared to the rusted-out chutes of theHarrow. MyWeave-reinforced grip holds firm against the rungs, and my lungs burn with a strength that still surprises me. Two decks up, a hard left through a corridor lined with dormant weapons racks, and then a massive fortified door—three times my height, engraved with Reaper glyphs that beam red as I approach.
The door hesitates. I can feel it—a movement through the stone, a moment of mechanical indecision, the ship weighing its Commander's privacy against the heat radiating from the mark.
The door opens.
The bridge onVirex Primestretches wide and immensely. The ceiling vaults upward into a cathedral of black stone, ribbed with bioluminescent veins that branch and fork overhead like a canopy of twinkling trees. The forward viewport stretches the full width of the room—a wall of stars so vast it makes me dizzy. Tactical consoles line the perimeter in a sweeping horseshoe, their surfaces alive with text and holographic projections of star systems I've never seen on any Guild chart. The air is colder here, drier, carrying the mineral tang of recycled atmosphere and the deep, resonant roar of a reactor operating at full capacity.
Draevik stands at the central command platform, his back to me, his hands braced on a console the size of a dining table.