On what passed for an average Monday in the asteroid belt of Theta Draconis, Chief Engineer Carl M. Serrano was doing what he did best: surviving deep space while keeping the mining rigs from tearing themselves apart.
This wasn't just any job—it was a contract with TerraCore Industries, one of the most powerful mining conglomerates in the quadrant. Carl had spent the last seven years ferrying between barren rock fields and automated extraction platforms, all to keep his family comfortable back on Mars.
He wasn't just a wrench-turner. Carl was both a certified Void-Class Pilot and a Systems Engineer, trained at the prestigious Andros Institute of Space Engineering—a school that prided itself on creating men and women who could build civilizations from dust. And that's exactly what he'd done. Decades of travel. Sleepless nights patching gravity regulators. Setting up mining arrays in asteroid fields where one wrong drill calibration meant obliteration.
Now, with his current contract winding down, Carl had one foot mentally on the next orbital ferry back to Mars. He was overdue for real air, a real sky, and the real faces of his wife and daughter. But space had other plans.
"Zzzzrt—Carl, you're needed in Sector B3. One of the automated drills has seized up. You're the closest qualified hand," crackled the internal comms, the voice of Charles, a barely-functioning operator AI slurred by lag and stress on the local network.
Carl let out a long, tired sigh. Malfunctions like this were routine. The ship's engineering team was chronically understaffed, a result of budget cuts and the simple truth that not many people could stomach being lightyears away from their loved ones for months on end.
"Copy that, Charles. En route now."
He began retracting his mobile drill arms into the belly of his ship, Valkyrie Unit 12. As the hydraulics hissed and groaned, something unusual caught his eye—an object drifting between mineral chunks, pulsing faintly against the void. It looked like a beacon, but not one from TerraCore, or any corporate registry he recognized.
Instinctively, Carl tapped the comms to report it—but of course, they were down again. No signal. Another thing to fix.
Switching to manual override, he brought the Valkyrie in closer and extended the ship's magnetic claw to retrieve the object. The cargo bay doors cycled open with a hollow echo as the device latched onto the magnetic mount. Carl punched in a course correction toward Sector B3, switched the ship to autopilot, and finally unbuckled himself from the cockpit's crash seat.
He stretched, bones creaking from hours of stillness, and moved toward the bay.
Climbing into a standard containment suit, Carl stepped up to the beacon. It was roughly the size of a large crate, composed of interlocked plates of dull gray alloy. Scorch marks pitted its sides, and its surface shimmered with what looked like a quantum phase distortion—a kind of ripple in space-time usually found near black holes or jump gates.
He activated the ship's internal sensors.
"AI, run a scan on the object. Is it emitting anything—radio, tachyon, subspace?"
Silence. The AI's core routines were offline—again.
Approaching cautiously, Carl reached out and brushed what looked like a touch panel. The surface flared to life, ancient servos groaning inside the device like bones grinding in rust. A deep thrum pulsed from its center, matched by synchronized lights blinking in rapid succession.
Then, without warning—everything went white.
He awoke to chaos.
A shrill alarm pierced his ears. Lights flickered red across the ship's corridors. His head throbbed, and his limbs felt like lead. The beacon was gone.
Floating above him was a digital HUD, projected from the ship's emergency systems. He swiped through it with a shaky hand, trying to dismiss warnings. Power fluctuations. Navcore failure. AI offline. Location: Unknown.
Carl staggered to the cockpit. Through the panoramic 270-degree viewport, the stars outside were… wrong.
Two suns burned in the distance, casting pale yellow and molten red light across a silent expanse. Suspended in the void was a space station—but unlike anything from known human design. Its silhouette was jagged, asymmetrical, and vast. Alien.
Heart pounding, Carl silenced the alarms and began a manual scan. The astrocartography systems couldn't match a single point of reference. He wasn't just off-course—he was in an uncharted sector, possibly a whole new galaxy.
He blinked, shook his head, checked the navigation panel.
No coordinates. No known stars. No AI. No link to TerraCore's Network Grid.
He wasn't off-course.
He was off-map.
Panic clawed its way up his spine. The implications were too vast to process. He backed away from the console, stumbled into his quarters, and collapsed on the bunk, body giving out before the mind could scream.
"ALERT: Unknown spacecraft approaching," the ship's backup voice module announced in monotone.