The deeper Ethan moved into the industrial ring, the more Ashen Prime shed its polished veneer. The walls darkened, the walkways narrowed. Gone were the glossy ads and clean filtration hums of the upper levels. Here, the floor panels echoed with the uneven clang of booted feet, and the air smelled of heated coolant, plasma scorches, and synth-oil layered over recycled carbon.
This was the spine of the station. The rust and rails. The places that didn't make it into Federation brochures.
He passed a group of rogue engineers crouched around a folding table, selling scavenged core parts and half-functional transponders like hot street food. Their coats were burn-marked and sleeveless, eyes wired from stim use, voices rough from breathing ionized metal for years. One of them was hawking an "unlocked" AI navigational matrix ripped from a retired courier ship. Ethan didn't stop. He didn't need trouble, and he felt like there was a big chance those were fakes.
The corridor forked, and he followed the left-hand path into a quieter, lower-lit stretch. Cargo lifts rumbled in the distance. Welders sparked blue fire into hull seams through maintenance hatches. Pipework hissed with pressure discharges like the groans of a living thing too old to complain properly.
A trio of mechanics stood huddled near a decommissioned tram rail, whispering around a flickering holo-map. Ethan passed by casually, slowing just enough to let his breathing steady, then focused.
A technique he'd practiced for weeks now.
He let his mind still, let his energy concentrate, and extended just enough psychic pressure to sharpen his senses. The noise in the background dulled, and the words between the three men began to filter through, faint but clear.
"—no manifest record. Just gone. Hull vanished mid-shift."
"Think it's another private sweep. Some corp security sweepin' up what they don't want seen."
"Six gone missing in the last two cycles, all on sector skimmer contracts."
Another voice, quieter: "They're prepping for something. You don't shuffle that many auxiliary units unless there's a grid-wide lockdown coming."
Ethan kept walking. He didn't turn. Didn't flinch. He simply let the information settle like dust in the back of his mind.
The same story, different tone. Private corporate fleets moving in silence. Disappearances. Sealed contracts and empty hangars.
He passed another row of benches where a pair of salvagers in patched pressure suits argued softly over a heat-scarred component that looked like it had seen a plasma fire and kept breathing. They'd dragged it in like a trophy, a hyperdrive shroud plate, maybe a decade old, maybe older. One of them swore it came from a wreck out near the Vestari Expanse, a graveyard of forgotten battles from the last wave of rebel insurrections.
"You know what they call us?" one of them said with a bitter laugh. "Scav rats. Vultures. Doesn't matter if it's dead space. Doesn't matter if we risk our lungs and limbs diving into zero-oxygen wrecks. We're still just pests to them. Easier to shoot us than to pay out finders' fees."
Ethan watched the transaction play out. The two men shaking hands on a price neither of them were happy with. They moved like ghosts from a past war, not soldiers, but the ones who came after, picking bones clean.
He wandered further into a wide open freight corridor now half-converted into an impromptu bazaar. The stalls here weren't sanctioned. They popped up when patrols were light and vanished the moment scanners lit red. Makeshift rugs covered cracked panels, and drone chassis were sold for parts alongside black-market pressure seals and retooled exo-suits.
He walked through slowly, quietly, letting his senses open again.
Snippets reached him like stray signals through static:
"—fleet of drones vanished off Namiar Point. Nobody's admitting it happened."
"—guy I knew from Andelune? Took a contract with a private recon outfit. Never came back. Not even his biometric tag."
"They're closing off jumps in Vellorai Sector. Said it's 'traffic control.' Load of bullshit, that is."
Every whisper was a breadcrumb. Every shadowed deal was a sign of strain. The Federation kept order, yes. But it didn't control everything. Not anymore. Maybe not ever.
The farther out you went, the more cracks you saw between the polished floor tiles. The outer sectors and their systems were still bleeding from conflicts that never really ended. The extremists wanted expansion and ressources at all costs. The moderates were trying to stabilize what they had. The centrists were plugging holes.
And the workers?
They were just trying to survive long enough to cash their next ration voucher.
He saw a crew of young technicians, barely more than teenagers, loading reactor coils into a freight elevator. One of them looked up at Ethan as he passed, eyes bloodshot from sleeplessness. The look wasn't hostile. Just tired.
Ethan gave him a small nod. The kid blinked, then turned back to his task.
By the time he looped back toward the main tramline, the psychic pressure behind his ears had faded. The whispers faded into industrial noise again. He could feel the fatigue creeping in, the weight of all he'd heard beginning to settle.
He hadn't learned any one secret. But what he'd picked up were fragments of truth.
There was movement out there. Quiet. Coordinated. Dangerous.
The Federation might be large, powerful, and vast… but it was stretched thin. Every shiny dome and glimmering panel on Ashen Prime was supported by duct tape and hope. And that hope was fraying.
Ethan stopped at a lift station, resting his hands on the rail as he waited for the platform to hum back to life. A maintenance worker stepped off, smudged with grease, muttering to himself about another power fluctuation in the east wing.
He let the man pass, then boarded the lift.
He didn't say a word until the doors sealed behind him.
Then, quietly, he whispered to himself:
"Yeah. This place is running hot."
He leaned back as the lift began to climb.
He hadn't expected much from this solo walk through the guts of the station. But what he got was something more valuable than intel.
Perspective.
The Federation's strength wasn't in its fleets or doctrine.
It was in the people who made it run. And those people were tired.
Ethan crossed his arms, eyes on the rising shaft.
If a storm was coming, he'd need to be ready.
Because next time he dropped into a warzone or a quiet system with flashing beacons?
He'd remember the whispers of Ashen Prime's rusted bones.
And he'd listen.