The Debris Field was a graveyard of ambition. Stretching for thousands of kilometers around The Ring, it was a dense belt of shattered lunar colonies, derelict warships from the Unification Wars, and frozen chunks of Earth's once-majestic orbital elevators. To the Hegemony, it was a navigational hazard. To Mina, it was a forest of steel where a small rabbit could hide from the wolves.
"Cut the main thrusters," Mina commanded, her fingers dancing over the thermal management toggles. "Switching to cold-gas maneuvering. If we emit even a spark of heat, their long-range scanners will pick us up against the background radiation."
The Rust Bucket went silent. The comforting hum of the engines died, replaced by the eerie, rhythmic clicking of the life-support systems. They were drifting now, a piece of trash among millions of other pieces of trash.
Kael sat in the co-pilot's chair, his eyes glued to the rear-view monitors. Far behind them, three needle-like silhouettes—the Hegemony interceptors—were weaving through the outer edges of the field. Their searchlights cut through the void like scalpels, searching for the wound they had left in the dark.
"They're disciplined," Kael whispered, afraid that even a loud voice might vibrate through the hull and give them away. "They aren't breaking formation."
"They're Black-Ops," Mina replied, wiping sweat from her brow. She looked at Kael's arm, where the golden geometric lines were now glowing with a steady, haunting light. "Whatever you found, Scavenger, it's making them break every protocol in the book. They just fired on a civilian dock. They don't do that for a stolen power cell."
"I told you, I found it in a wreck," Kael said, pulling the obsidian drive from his pocket.
The moment the drive was exposed to the open cockpit, the air seemed to thicken. The temperature in the cabin dropped ten degrees. The frost began to bloom on the edges of the viewports, not in random patterns, but in perfect, fractaled hexagons.
"Kael… what is that?" Mina asked, her hand drifting toward her pulse-pistol.
"I don't know. It's been… talking to me. Not with words. Just pulses."
Suddenly, the ship's primary monitors flickered. The radar screen, which should have been showing the chaotic clutter of the debris field, went white. Then, a single, clear signal appeared—a coordinate pulse coming from the very center of the field, an area known as the "Dead Zone" where the debris was so thick no ship had returned in decades.
"The drive is slaving the ship's computer," Mina hissed, trying to override the controls. "It's rerouting the Nav-Com! I've lost steering!"
"Wait," Kael said, his voice sounding distant, as if he were underwater. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what? The sounds of us dying?"
"The singing."
Mina froze. She didn't hear singing, but she saw it. The cockpit window didn't show the debris field anymore. For a split second, the rusted husks of ships vanished, replaced by a vision of a vibrant, blue-green world. She saw vast oceans, clouds that weren't gray with pollutants, and forests so deep they looked like emerald velvet. It was Earth—not the scorched, brown marble they orbited, but the Earth from the history vids.
Then, the "Echo" hit them.
It wasn't a sound, but a psychic shockwave. Kael collapsed forward, his forehead hitting the console.
He wasn't on the ship anymore. He was standing in a high-tech laboratory, the air smelling of ozone and expensive perfume. A man stood with his back to him, looking out a window at a flourishing New York City. The man turned. He had Kael's eyes, but his face was lined with a century of grief.
"Kaelen," the man said. "The bridge is failing. We couldn't save them all. I've hidden the seed in the static. You have to find the Horizon. You have to—"
"Kael! Wake up!"
A sharp sting across his cheek snapped Kael back to reality. Mina had slapped him, her face pale and terrified.
"The interceptors!" she yelled. "The drive… it let out a burst! It was like a flare in the dark. They're right on top of us!"
Kael shook his head, the vision of the blue world still burned into his retinas. He looked at the monitors. The three Hegemony ships had broken formation and were converging on their position, their weapons hot.
"We have to go into the Dead Zone," Kael said, his voice steady with a sudden, unearned confidence.
"Are you insane? Nothing comes out of the Dead Zone! The gravity wells from the old lunar fragments will tear the hull apart!"
"The drive is showing me a path," Kael said, pointing to the Nav-Com. The golden lines on his arm were now mirrored on the screen, a shimmering thread of light weaving through the icons of lethal debris. "It's a slipstream. If we follow it, their sensors won't be able to track us. Their computers can't calculate the variables fast enough."
Mina looked at the interceptors, then at the golden thread on the screen, and finally at Kael. "If we die, I'm killing you first."
She slammed the throttles forward.
The Rust Bucket roared to life, its engines spitting blue fire as it dove into the heart of the graveyard. They wove between the massive, tumbling remains of a space station and the jagged ribs of a forgotten dreadnought.
The interceptors followed, but as they entered the fringes of the Dead Zone, the lead ship clipped a spinning piece of titanium plating. Its wing sheared off, and the ship spiraled into a collision with a frozen water-tanker, disappearing in a silent, brilliant explosion.
"They're backing off!" Mina shouted over the groan of the hull. "They can't follow the line!"
But the Rust Bucket wasn't slowing down. The obsidian drive was now humming at a pitch that made the glass in the cockpit vibrate. The golden thread on the screen led them deeper into the shadows, toward a massive, dark object that didn't show up on any star chart.
It was a gate. An ancient, circular structure, miles wide, floating in the center of the debris. It was powered down, a ring of dead stone and cold circuits, but as the Rust Bucket approached, the obsidian drive in Kael's pocket began to glow with the intensity of a dying star.
"Kael, what is that thing?" Mina whispered, her awe momentarily overriding her fear.
"It's not an 'Echo,'" Kael said, the realization chilling his blood. "It's a door."
The drive pulsed one final time, and the ancient gate began to stir. Dust and ice fell away from its surface as blue veins of energy surged through the structure. A shimmering film of light stretched across the center of the ring—a wormhole, stable and inviting.
"We don't have a choice," Kael said. "The other two interceptors are regrouping. If we stay, we're dead."
Mina gripped the flight stick, her knuckles white. "I really hate scavengers."
She pushed the ship into the light.
The world turned inside out. Gravity became a suggestion. Color became a sound. And for a moment, Kael felt the presence of his grandfather again, a whisper in the back of his mind: Welcome home, Kaelen. Try not to break it this time.
The Rust Bucket vanished from the Debris Field, leaving the Hegemony ships staring at a patch of empty, silent space.