Chapter 2

"Think," she whispered to herself, her voice tinny in her helmet. "Think."

The derelict's power core hummed louder now, a deep vibration she felt through her boots. The console's display flickered, the sensor reading resolving into something more detailed. Not one contact. Three. Moving in formation.

She turned and ran.

The corridor curved in that disorienting way, her helmet lamp casting wild shadows. She slammed her palm against the docking collar's release mechanism, but nothing happened. The seal held fast.

"Come on," she growled, hitting it again.

The ship shuddered. A low groan echoed through the hull, metal protesting against forces it wasn't designed to withstand. Eva's heart hammered as she cycled the manual override, her fingers finding the alien equivalent of a release latch. It gave way with a grinding click.

She pulled herself through the collar, not bothering with grace, and slammed the Odyssey's airlock shut behind her. Her suit hissed as pressure equalized, and she tore off her helmet, gasping.

"Computer, status of unknown contacts," she said, her voice hoarse.

"No contacts detected within sensor range," the ship's calm voice replied.

Eva stared at the empty air. "What?"

She scrambled to the bridge, her wet boots squeaking on the deck plates. The main display showed nothing but the dead star and the derelict, a silent graveyard against the void. The sensor console was clear.

"They were there," she muttered. "I saw them."

She checked the sensor logs. Nothing. Not a blip, not a trace of the three contacts she'd seen on the alien display. Her isolation training whispered doubts into her mind. Hallucination. Deep space madness. The loneliness finally breaking through.

But the warning was real. She had the data packet, the coordinates, the message burned into her memory. Flight. Flight. Flight.

Eva pulled up the coordinates from the alien console. They led to a region of space she'd never heard of, a patch of emptiness between galaxies. No star, no planet, no reason for anything to be there.

"And yet," she said to the empty bridge, "that's exactly where someone wants me to go."

She studied the data packet more carefully, decompressing the files the alien console had transmitted to her suit's computer. Most of it was gibberish, alien symbols she couldn't parse. But there were patterns. Mathematical sequences that repeated, star charts with trajectories, and one clear image.

It was a ship. Not the derelict she'd just left, but something larger, sleeker. Organic curves and sharp angles that shouldn't work together but did. And it was fleeing. The image showed it accelerating away from something, its engines burning at maximum output.

Beneath the image, more text. This time in English only, as if the message had been tailored for her.

"They come. We fly. We hide. You must do the same. The coordinates are a sanctuary. Go there. Do not seek us. Do not try to help. You cannot."

Eva leaned back in her chair, the weight of the message settling over her. This wasn't just a warning. It was a plea. And whoever had sent it had gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure someone found it.

She checked her sensor logs again. Still nothing. But she couldn't shake the feeling that she wasn't alone. The derelict's power core had flickered to life for a reason, and the three contacts she'd seen—real or not—had been moving with purpose.

"Computer, plot a course to the coordinates from the alien data packet."

"Course plotted. Estimated travel time: six weeks at maximum sustainable velocity."

Six weeks. She had enough supplies for four months, maybe five if she rationed. It was tight, but doable. The real question was whether she wanted to follow a warning from an alien civilization she'd never met, to a destination she knew nothing about.

She thought about the derelict. The strange alloy hull, the curved corridors, the console that had lit up as if expecting her. Whoever had built that ship had been running from something. And they'd wanted someone to find their message, to carry it forward.

"Engage course," she said. "Maximum sustainable velocity."

The Odyssey's fusion drive hummed, a vibration she felt in her bones. The ship turned slowly, aligning with the new heading. The dead star and the derelict slid out of view, replaced by empty space.

Eva watched the stars drift past, her hand resting on the navigation console. The warning echoed in her mind. Flight. Flight. Flight.

"I'm flying," she whispered. "I just hope I'm flying toward safety, not into something worse."

The ship settled into its new course, the hum of the drive a steady rhythm. Eva checked the instruments one more time. No contacts. No signals. Just the silence she'd known for three years.

But the silence felt different now. It wasn't empty. It was waiting.

She was about to power down the main display when a new alert flashed across the screen. A message, coming in on the emergency beacon frequency. The same frequency as the original signal.

Eva's blood ran cold. She opened the transmission.

A single word, repeated three times.

"Found. Found. Found."

And then a set of coordinates. Her coordinates. The Odyssey's exact position in space.

Someone—or something—knew exactly where she was.