Briggs's Bargain

Briggs’s knuckles were white where he gripped the worn console of the comms station. The static that crackled through the speakers was a familiar, unwelcome companion, a phantom echo of a life he’d tried to outrun. Outside the viewport, the nebulae swirled in hues of bruised plum and sickly green, a far cry from the sterile, efficient corridors of the fleet he’d once known, or the grimy, shadow-filled docking bays where his past lay buried.

“Anything, Briggs?” Maya’s voice, usually bright and clear, was laced with a thread of anxiety. She stood behind him, her eyes scanning the holographic display, her brow furrowed. The Ironmule was currently adrift in a desolate sector, a ghost ship waiting for a signal, a whisper, anything that would point them towards a weakness in OmniCorp’s iron grip. They needed information, intel on Vance’s supply lines, his patrol routes, anything that could give Hampton the edge he craved. And the intel they needed, the kind that wasn’t available through official channels, the kind that was traded in hushed tones and flickering neon, was something Briggs knew how to find.

“Just the usual cosmic white noise, kid,” Briggs grunted, his gaze fixed on the swirling patterns of interference. He ran a calloused thumb over a scratch on the console, a scar from a particularly rough landing years ago. “Vance has got the Hyper Highways locked down tighter than a drum. No chatter, no stray transmissions, nothing. It’s like they’ve swallowed the comms.”