Chapter 4: The Second Visit
Karl woke before the alarm, nerves crackling like loose wires. The cockpit was still dark, consoles breathing low amber, but his mind was already outside the hull, drifting across the derelict's cargo bay, counting bricks and batteries. He had dreamed of sealed crates that opened into starlight, of hands reaching out that turned to vacuum the moment he touched them. He rubbed his eyes until the dream dissolved, then checked the chrono: four hours until the next convergence window. Time to move.
He swung out of the chair, boots clanking on chilled deck. The air tasted metallic, a sign the recycler was working harder than usual—probably the new filter settling in. He tapped the gauge anyway: ninety-two percent efficiency, up from sixty. The salvaged cartridge had already paid for itself. He grunted approval, then pulled the half-eaten protein bar from the locker and chewed while he floated aft. The bar tasted like salted cardboard, but cardboard kept fingers steady and heart beating.
At the airlock he ran through the suit checklist: seals green, visor clear, tether intact, cutter charged, rail-rifle mag full. He hesitated at the printer. Its charge read twenty-nine percent—enough for a small patch, not enough for miracles. He clipped it to his belt anyway; empty hands were useless hands. Then he cycled the lock and stepped into vacuum, pushing off toward the derelict that hung two kilometers away like a sleeping whale.
The stars were sharp pins in black cloth. Folly's running lights glowed dim amber behind him, a candle he could snuff with his thumb. He kept his eyes forward, thruster pack cold on his back, conserving the tiny reserve of nitrogen for the return hop. The tether unspooled smooth, a silver thread glinting in starlight. Halfway across he paused, rotated, and studied the hulk with optics. Still no thermal bloom, still no transponder ping. Dead, or pretending hard.
He touched down near the same maintenance hatch, boots mag-clamping to frost-rimed steel. The hatch stood open exactly as he'd left it, a dark mouth waiting to be fed. He ducked inside, switched on helmet lamp, and moved deeper than yesterday, following chalk marks he'd scratched every fifty meters. Past the first cargo hold the corridor angled down, gravity plates long dead. He floated, hand over hand, along a guide cable that vibrated with distant machinery—probably ancient coolant pumps cycling on decaying timers.
Ten meters on he found a second hold, smaller, door sealed by a manual wheel locked with red safety wire. He cut the wire with the cutter bar, then spun the wheel until the dogs retracted with a hollow clang. The hatch swung inward and stopped against something soft. He squeezed through the gap and found bodies—three, maybe four, floating in suits whose fabric had yellowed like old paper. Faces hidden by fogged visors. No blood, no burns. They had simply run out of air years ago and drifted together, gloved hands almost touching.
Karl swallowed the taste of copper and forced himself to look. One suit bore a patch he recognized: Meridian Freight Lines, same conglomerate that had built Folly's frame. That meant this hulk was a sister ship, maybe even a contemporary. He spoke softly, voice carried only inside his helmet. "Sorry, cousins. I'll take what you can't use." He closed the visor on the nearest corpse, a gesture no one would see but him, then turned to the crates.
These containers were smaller, labeled LIFE SUPPORT and TOOLS. He popped the first lid and exhaled a cloud that fogged the visor. Inside lay shrink-wrapped filter cartridges—twenty, thirty, more than he could carry. The second crate held coiled high-pressure tubing, the kind used for thruster lines. The third held rolls of molecular epoxy, still vacuum-sealed. He stared at the treasure and felt the weight of luck settle on his shoulders like a heavy coat. Too much at once usually meant the universe was about to demand payment.
He filled two mesh bags with cartridges, two rolls of epoxy, and as much tubing as he could lash to his belt. Then he scanned the hold for anything that might bite: trip wires, proximity charges, data loggers still pinging. Nothing. The dead had been tidy. He backed out, sealed the hatch behind him out of respect, and chalked a new mark: HOLD 2 – SALVAGE OK.
On the return trip he took a different route, following a side corridor that led upward toward what the schematic suggested was the old engineering bay. Halfway along he spotted a flicker through an open doorway—steady, rhythmic, like a heartbeat LED. He raised the rifle and drifted closer. Inside was a compact auxiliary reactor, smaller than Folly's bottle but still humming at low idle. Its status panel glowed green across the board. Someone had left it in standby mode decades ago and it had simply… kept going.
Karl's mind raced. If he could slave this unit to Folly's grid he could double his power budget, maybe even run full heaters and lights for the first time in months. But the reactor massed four tonnes and sat bolted to the deck. Moving it was impossible without a cutting crew and a tug. He noted the model number, took images with helmet cam, then spotted a data port still blinking. He pulled a portable reader from his pouch, jacked in, and downloaded the logs. Encryption was light—corporate standard from twenty years back. He could crack it later. For now the mere fact it powered up was wealth enough.
He retraced his path to the maintenance hatch, stepped outside, and pushed off toward Folly. The tether reeled him home while he ran numbers in his head: cartridges enough for two hundred days, epoxy enough for major hull work, tubing enough to rebuild half the thruster lines. And a reactor heart still beating in a corpse. He felt the old smile tug at cracked lips. The universe had handed him an invoice written in starlight; he intended to pay in sweat.
Inside the airlock he cycled pressure, removed his helmet, and smelled the faint metallic warmth of recycled air that suddenly felt less thin. He stacked the salvage on the cockpit floor and stared at the modest pile that was not modest at all. Cartridge tower like gray bricks, epoxy rolls like gold ingots, tubing coils like sleeping pythons. He logged each item, time-stamped it, and updated the inventory. Food still forty days, water still sixty, filters now two hundred, power reserves climbing. The numbers formed a bridge across the abyss.
Karl floated to the window, placed a gloved hand on the glass, and looked across at the dark hulk. "Thank you, cousins," he said again, voice steady. "Sleep tight. I'll spend your gifts wisely." The derelict made no answer, only continued its slow spin, antennas waving like broken fingers bidding farewell. He watched until it passed out of the window's frame, then turned to the reader still plugged into his suit port. The auxiliary reactor logs were decrypting, green bar crawling across the tiny screen. Somewhere inside those files might be star-maps, supply caches, maybe even the name of a port still breathing.
He felt the ship hum beneath his boots—reactor steady, batteries climbing, heaters purring. For the first time since the explosion he had more than tomorrow. He had weeks, maybe months. And months meant distance, and distance meant chance. Karl sat in the cracked pilot chair, strapped the webbing across his chest, and grinned into the dark. The grin hurt, split his lip fresh, but he welcomed the blood. It tasted like forward motion.