The silence was worse than the explosion.
Pride-Kendrick Lamar plays in Elion's mind
"Loves gonna get you killed but price gonna be death of you and me and you and you and you and međ”"
Elion Voss spun in the void, his back pressed against the frozen wreckage of the ISS Magnus. His lungs burnedânot from lack of air, but from the last breath he'd taken before the hull tore open, the oxygen still trapped uselessly in his chest. Around him, the corpse of the harvest ship bled debris into the dark: sparking conduit wires, shattered viewports, and bodies. So many bodies. Some are still strapped into their harnesses. Others are torn apart by the vacuum's hunger.
Pirates.
The attack had come during the sleep cycle. No warning. No demands. Just the shriek of rending metal as their mechasâancient, patchwork horrors with hull-cracker clawsâdug into the Magnus' belly. Elion had been elbow-deep in Engine Pit Three, sealing a coolant leak, when the first explosion rocked the ship. By the time he'd clawed his way up the service ladder, the screaming had already started. Then the second blast hit. Then the screaming stopped.
Something bumped against his shoulder.
The Celestial Key.
It floated just beyond his numb fingers, spinning lazily, its etched surface catching the distant starlight. No larger than his thumb, but in the endless dark, it glowed like a dying ember. Selene's warning echoed in his skull:
"It doesn't just open doors, Elion. It judges."
A shadow moved against the wreckage.
Elion's pulse stuttered. Through the jagged tear where the Magnus' cargo hold had been, a shape emergedâa pirate mecha, its rusted hull studded with scavenged armor plates. The cockpit was a slit of grimy glass, and behind it, Elion could just make out the pilot's silhouette. Watching. Hunting.
The Key's glow pulsed brighter.
A second mecha appeared, then a third. They moved like carrion birds, prying open storage containers with hydraulic claws. One paused beside a cluster of frozen corpses, tilting its head as if weighing the value of dead flesh.
Elion's vision blurred at the edges. His fingers twitched, stiff with cold. The Key drifted closer, its light throbbing in time with his slowing heartbeat.
Thenâ
A sound. Not through the vacuum, but in his skull. A single, resonant chime, like a sword striking a bell. The Key flared white-hot, and for one terrifying instant, Elion saw the stars bend around it. The pirate mechas froze. Their cockpits swiveled toward him.
The last thing Elion registered before the dark took him was the Key's light swallowing the void wholeâand the distant, impossible silhouette of something vast uncoiling in the deep.