Chapter 45 · First stop

Hyperspace thinned like breath on glass, and the stars snapped back into focus.

The Mynock coasted into realspace over a field of fractured ice. A pale moon rolled beneath them, its surface fissured and glittering, the sunlight spilling off it in sheets. Eli felt the relief of being back in lesser space: where coordinates are predictable, and jumps usually take you where you intended to.

The listener buoy drifted in the moon’s faint shadow, a dark cylinder the size of a small shuttle, haloed by static discharge. It looked lonely.

Eli adjusted the thrusters, easing them closer. The ship’s hum shifted, and he could feel it through his boots—the vibration of an old vessel trying to remember how to behave in polite company.

Stent monitored readings from the co-pilot’s chair, posture immaculate.

“Radiation levels within tolerance. Magnetic field stable. Maintain lateral velocity under five meters per second.”

“Yes, Commander,” Eli said, all mock obedience.

“You can drop the rank, you know. Traders don’t salute.”

“Old habits,” Stent said.

“Same here,” Eli replied. “Old habit of pretending I still like orders.”

The buoy grew in the viewport, a black mark against the bright scatter of the moon’s reflected light. Its antenna array flickered like a half-remembered thought, one of the status diodes pulsing red in a lazy rhythm. Stent studied the readings, expression unreadable.

“Output fluctuating,” he said. “Standard relay class. Passive. I will extract the data manually.”

Eli glanced at him. “You mean outside?”

“Correct.”

He looked toward the locker where the lone pressure suit hung. “You’re aware that thing barely fits you. And it’s not exactly new.”

“The seals are intact.”

“Mostly,” Eli muttered. “And we’re really not going to talk about how the lower part with a patch looks like it used to accommodate a tail?”

Stent’s only reply was a look that managed to include both patience and threat.

Eli sighed. “All I’m saying is we need a second suit. Safety protocol, redundancy—pick your favorite excuse.”

“Duly noted,” Stent said, already opening the locker.

The Mynock’s airlock wheezed when he cycled it. It always did. A stuttering cough, then a long pause, as if the mechanism had to be convinced it still believed in the concept of “open.”
The first attempt failed. The second got halfway. The third finally sealed the inner hatch and bled the air out with a reluctant sigh.

Eli watched through the small viewport. The lights in the lock shifted from white to amber to green. Stent’s voice came through the comm, steady as gravity. “Pressure stable. Manual release.”

“Copy. Try not to make the lock angry again.”

“It is mechanical,” Stent said. “It has no temperament.”

“Tell that to the noise it makes.”

The outer hatch opened on silence. Stent stepped into it like a man stepping onto a familiar floor. The suit made him look broader, awkward at the joints, but his movements stayed precise. He fired the thrusters on his pack and drifted toward the buoy, a small blue figure against the silver-gray halo of the moon.

Eli followed his progress on the sensors and through the viewport. There was no point on paying attention to the telemetry readings on the cockpit. Stent’s spacesuit telemetry module wasn’t functional - in fact Eli was sure there wasn’t any.

At the buoy, Stent anchored himself with a magnetic tether and produced the small data module clipped to his belt. He attached it to the buoy’s interface panel. Lights shimmered, the pattern of a handshake sequence beginning.

“Connection established,” he reported. His voice had that quiet, contained satisfaction it always did when machines obeyed.

Eli leaned forward. “Transmitting to us?”

“Negative,” Stent said. “We are beyond secured channels. I will store locally.”

He meant he didn’t trust the silence. Not anymore.

Eli watched him adjust the data feed, long fingers moving with the patience of someone carving in ice. Static rippled across the console—harmless bleed from the buoy’s old comms array. After a moment, Stent spoke again.

“Data transfer complete. File integrity high.”

“You going to wipe it?”

“No.” A pause. “This relay is not one of ours. I used borrowed access. Altering it would invite notice.”

Eli nodded slowly, even though Stent couldn’t see it. “Prudent.”

“Necessary,” Stent said, which in his dialect was the same thing.

He detached the module, gave the buoy a small push to stabilize its spin, and started back. The thrusters flared pale blue, scattering dust from the buoy’s surface. For a few seconds, Eli lost him against the glare of the moon, and his pulse kicked faster. Without telemetry he had only visuals to track Stent.

The outer hatch accepted him without argument this time. The inner one did not. It took another coaxing round of cycling, a diagnostic tap from Eli, and a muttered threat before the seals gave in with a grudging hiss. The door slid open, and Stent stepped inside, helmet under one arm, face impassive.

“Next time,” Eli said, “we’re getting a second suit. And a better airlock.”

“Both would be redundant,” Stent said, but he was breathing just a shade too quickly.

“Redundant,” Eli repeated. “You keep using that word when you mean ‘alive.’”

Stent ignored him, setting the data unit on the console. “Proceed with course plotting.”

Eli looked at him for a moment longer, then turned back to the controls. The buoy receded on the display until it was nothing, a quiet presence listening in the dark.

“Do you ever think how many of those are out here? Little ghosts just waiting for someone to listen?”

“Someone is always listening,” Stent said. “The question is whether they comprehend.”

“That’s almost poetic,” Eli said.

“I did not intend poetry.”

“Good. I’m allergic to it.”

“Then you are fortunate,” Stent said dryly. “I rarely attempt it.”

The airlock’s hiss faded, leaving the ship in its usual half-broken calm.

Eli checked the cabin pressure out of habit, though the readout was fine. He pretended the verification was for the ship’s sake, not his own nerves.

Stent was already back at his station, helmet clipped neatly to the bulkhead. He opened the small data module and began copying its contents to an isolated terminal—a system that didn’t touch the Mynock’s main network. The screen filled with orderly lines of Cheunh code, bright and cold against the dark.

Eli leaned against the doorframe. “No remote transmission?”

“None,” Stent said. “These frequencies are no longer safe. Information will remain local until we re-enter secured space.”

“Which may be never,” Eli said.

Stent didn’t look up. “Then the data will remain secure indefinitely.”

Eli rubbed a hand across his face. “You’ve got a talent for optimism.”

“I have a talent for accuracy,” Stent said.

The hum of the engines filled the silence between them. Outside, the moon shrank into a small glass coin. The relay buoy vanished into the static of distance, leaving them with nothing but vector lines and probability.

Eli leaned back into the pilot’s chair, letting the worn seat groan beneath him. He keyed in the coordinates for their next jump. “We should get a rest stop in after the next buoy. We’re burning through coolant faster than expected.”

“Efficiency of the system is seventy-nine percent of nominal,” Stent said without looking up.

“Which, translated into human, means we’re leaking.”

“Correct.”

Eli gave the console a small thump. “Fine. We’ll fix it once we’re somewhere that doesn’t require a suit meant for someone with a tail.”

That earned him the smallest flicker of an eye movement. In Chiss terms, it was practically a smirk.

The Mynock slipped into a lazy drift between jumps. Eli ran a system check, muttering to himself. The coolant valve was half-stuck again; he made a note to threaten it later.

Stent catalogued the buoy data, meticulous as a surgeon.

The information was thin. Routine communications, sensor readings, and one more fragment of strange metadata like the first—non-standard, directed outward, unmarked by official registry. Too organized to be random. Too faint to decode.

Their voices overlapped in the small space without clashing—two instruments playing different melodies that somehow fit.

When the diagnostics finished, Eli stretched, feeling every kilometer of cramped hull in his spine. “You know what this ship needs?”

“Repairs.”

“Personality,” Eli said. “She’s all function, no charm.”

“Charm attracts inspection,” Stent replied.

“Sure, but it also gets you free drinks.”

Stent gave him the kind of look that made Eli suspect that joke translated badly into Cheunh.

Later, in the galley, the noise of the engines softened to a low vibration.

Eli heated water for some tea; Stent re-sealed the water recyclers. The routine was already forming around them—work, eat or drink, maintain, repeat.

He found it strangely comforting. Maybe that was the danger.

They drank the tea standing, backs against opposite walls. Stent always finished first, wiping the mug until it looked newly issued. Eli lingered, sipping slowly.

“About the next buoy,” he said. “We’ll need suits. I insist”

Stent nodded. “Its orbit intersects an asteroid belt. Armature access will be manual.”

“Meaning we get to go outside.”

“Correct.”

“Can’t wait,” Eli said, tone halfway between sarcasm and thrill. He’d always liked the quiet of vacuum—the way sound vanished and you could pretend the universe had finally stopped shouting.

Stent checked his chronometer. “Seven hours until intercept. You should rest.”

Eli smirked. “You’re getting good at giving orders again.”

“They are still efficient.”

He didn’t argue. Efficiency was as close to comfort as Stent ever got.

Later, while the ship moved again through hyperspace, Eli sat on the edge of the bunk with his datapad, the faint blue glow washing across his face. The ship’s rhythm had become familiar—the small clicks, the periodic shudder, the soft whine of the cooling system just before it evened out again. The sound of a machine that meant well.

He looked at the galley from where he sat: the clean counters, the sealed containers, the empty bowl from the night before. Everything in its place. The order of it made him restless.

He keyed the pad, pulled up the data logs. “Breadcrumbs,” he said quietly, testing the word against the silence.

From the other bunk, Stent’s voice came calm and uninflected. “If you are speaking to the computer, it cannot answer.”

“I was talking to myself.”

“Then perhaps phrase it as a question.”

Eli turned the pad over in his hands. “Fine. Question: how many of these breadcrumbs do we have to find before they start forming a trail?”

“I do not know,” Stent said. “But it is the only pattern we have. And patterns, however faint, lead somewhere.”

Eli looked across the narrow space between them. “You really believe that.”

“It is preferable to believing in nothing,” Stent said.

“Guess that’s one thing we’ve got in common.”

They fell quiet again, the silence heavy but not uncomfortable. Outside, the hyperspace streak drifted past the viewport. The navigation lights painted soft reflections across Stent’s face—pale blue over darker blue, human and Chiss sharing the same small orbit.

The ship creaked once, long and low. Eli smiled into the dark.

“Still with us, girl,” he murmured to the Mynock. “Good.”

He thought he saw Stent’s head tilt slightly, as if listening too. Then the light flickered, and the quiet took over again.

When the jump ended, hyperspace folded away with a gentle lurch. Stars returned, and the scanners lit with the clutter of a small debris field—shards of ice, scrap, and silence. One more jump and they’ll reach their destination.

Eli stretched, every joint popping. “We’ll run a passive scan, keep our footprint low.”

“Agreed,” Stent said. “Have you had enough rest?”

“I’m fine.”

“You are human. ‘Fine’ is not a reliable descriptor.”

“Neither is ‘Chiss efficiency,’ but we both keep trying.”

That got no answer, but Eli thought he caught the ghost of amusement around Stent’s eyes before he turned back to his console.

The next relay was older than the charts said it should be.

It floated on the edge of a gray cloud of particulate ice, its signal weak, carrier wave stretched thin by years of neglect. The outer plating bore scars—meteor pitting, carbon scoring, a half-melted serial number. When it appeared on the scopes, it didn’t look like equipment; it looked like something left behind by an civilization that had stopped believing in permanence.

Eli slowed their approach. “She’s been sitting here a while.”

“Judging by radiation decay,” Stent said, “approximately two or three years without maintenance.”

“That’s longer than I’ve had a decent vacation.”

Stent didn’t answer. He never did when the conversation risked humor.

The Mynock glided closer, inertial compensators fighting the pull of the debris field. Eli adjusted thrusters with small, careful touches, coaxing the ship through the drifting ice. The sound of collision warnings ticked softly in the background, each one dismissed before it could grow into alarm.

At two hundred meters, the buoy’s automatic handshake pinged them and died halfway through the exchange. Stent re-initiated the link manually.

“Signal degraded,” he said. “Possibly mechanical failure.”

“Or somebody turned it off,” Eli said.

“That is also possible.”

He looked at the viewport. The buoy’s indicator light blinked once every few seconds, weak and irregular. “Do we try it from here?”

Stent was already unbuckling his harness. “No. This one will also require external access.”

Eli rubbed his forehead. “Tell me we’re not developing a pattern.”

“We are verifying one.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“It is not meant to be.” Stent’s tone was as steady as his hands when he reached for the suit.

Eli checked the airlock’s seals himself this time, double and triple. The ancient door still coughed in protest when he cycled it, but it obeyed sooner—perhaps because he’d learned the trick of the sequence. Stent slipped through the hatch and vanished into the black.

The comm crackled faintly. “Crossing thirty meters. Tether engaged.”

Eli watched through the viewport, jaw tight. He could see Stent’s suit lights strobing faintly against the buoy’s surface. The motion had a rhythm to it—steady, deliberate. The pattern of someone who trusted the void more than conversation.

He tried not to imagine the hiss of the suit’s seals, the sound of the airlock failing to reopen. He’d heard of enough close calls with old equipment to know how little separated precision from disaster.

The minutes stretched. The comm remained a dry whisper of background noise. Then Stent’s voice, calm as always: “Transfer complete. File encryption confirmed.”

“Send it through.”

“Negative. I will store locally again.”

Eli glanced at the blank screen of the transmissions console. “Not even a checksum? It was going to send over the data when the handshake failed.”

“No. The encryption is unique—Ascendancy code, but altered.”

“Altered how?”

“I will determine that once we are safely clear.”

Eli frowned. “You mean once no one’s listening.”

“Correct.”

The comm clicked silent again. He could just see Stent pushing off from the buoy, the blue flame of his thrusters flashing once before the shadow swallowed him. The ship’s lights caught him for a moment—one sharp silhouette against the bright scatter of the ice field—and then he was gone, a small signal crawling back toward the Mynock.

When the inner hatch finally cycled, the sound made Eli exhale in something close to relief. Stent stepped through, trailing cold air, visor fogged at the edges. He stripped the helmet off and set it aside.

“No problems,” he said.

Eli leaned back in the pilot’s chair. “Good. I was starting to think the lock was going to play favorites.”

“It obeyed.”

“After a fashion.” Eli nodded toward the data module clipped to Stent’s belt. “Anything useful?”

Stent hesitated. That was new. “Possibly. The metadata string was fragmented—pieces missing, yet still carrying checksum continuity. Someone tampered with it.”

“Recently?”

“I cannot tell. But the pattern remains directed outward. The relay path does not end here.”

Eli let that sink in. The hum of the engines filled the gap.

“So whoever left these breadcrumbs didn’t stop where they were supposed to.”

“Correct.”

He looked out at the viewport. The buoy floated away, red light blinking irregularly. “That sounds like him.”

Stent didn’t reply, but his posture stiffened slightly, the Chiss version of agreement.

They moved on, slow and careful through the debris field, leaving the buoy to spin alone in the dark. When the autopilot reengaged, Eli unlatched his harness and stood, rolling his shoulders.

“Next time,” he said, “I’m the one going outside.”

Stent looked up from the data module. “There is only one suit, it is too big for you.”

“Then we stop somewhere and buy another.”

“Unnecessary.”

“Necessary,” Eli said. “You might be made of logic, but that doesn’t make you indestructible.”

Stent paused, then inclined his head a fraction. “Your concern is noted.”

“Good,” Eli said. “Because I’m serious.”

“I know,” Stent said. “That is why I am not dismissing it.”

Eli blinked. That was as close to gratitude as Stent was ever going to get.