During the first hour after departure, an eerie silence filled the Old Bones.
It was not the kind of silence that brought relaxation, but the tense stillness that emerged when everyone was absorbed in their own tasks. Deshui knew perfectly well that this state wouldn't last. Stuffing nine people with radically different personalities into an eighty-meter-long metal can and sending them into unknown deep space meant conflict was inevitable—like plasma in a reactor, sooner or later it would erupt.
He just hadn't expected it to start with breakfast.
The ship's food synthesizer was a model from twenty years ago. Half the labels on its interface buttons had been worn smooth. When Deshui entered the crew lounge, he found Sarah Keel staring at the machine, her expression as solemn as if she were facing a corpse awaiting autopsy.
"It refuses to work," the doctor said without turning around.
Deshui stepped closer. The screen displayed an error code:
[Protein Matrix Reserves Insufficient (3%). Replenishment Recommended.]
"Marcus should have checked the life-support systems," Deshui said as he pressed the restart button.
The machine coughed—literally sounded like clearing phlegm—then spat out a gray-brown block. It hit the tray with a dull thud.
Sarah picked it up with tweezers and examined it under the light. "Judging by the color and texture, this should theoretically be a 'nutrient block.' But its density…" She tapped it lightly. It sounded like knocking on wood. "It doesn't conform to any known food standards."
"Is it edible?" Deshui asked.
Sarah pulled a portable scanner from her medical kit and ran it over the block. "Contains basic nutrients: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins. The ratios are strange, but in theory it can sustain life." She paused. "However, the scan shows 0.3% unknown organic compounds. No database match."
"Toxic?"
"I don't know." She set the block down. "It may require human testing."
At that moment, Lina Watson walked in. Dark circles shadowed her eyes—she clearly hadn't slept, having spent the night combing through the Gray Falcon's final signal data. Without even looking, she took the block from Sarah's hand and bit into it.
"Hey!" Deshui and Sarah said at the same time.
Lina chewed. Her face twisted for a second, then smoothed out. "Edible." She swallowed and took another bite. "Tastes like eating a damp encyclopedia, but it's edible."
Sarah stared at her. "That 0.3% of unknown compounds—"
"Probably mold. Or disinfectant residue from a cleaning cycle twenty years ago," Lina said, finishing the block and walking toward the coffee machine—an even older relic. "Back at the Information Warfare Center, we ate worse. Once a server coolant leak contaminated the cafeteria's synthesis feed. For a whole week, everything tasted like sweet mechanical lubricant."
The coffee machine dispensed a cup of black liquid. Lina took a sip without flinching.
Deshui watched her and suddenly realized that this young woman had probably lived through harsher environments than he'd imagined. The Information Warfare Center was infamous for its pressure. Seventy-two-hour continuous shifts were routine, and the food and drink were the cheapest synthetic rations available—because, as management liked to say, "the budget must be spent where it matters."
"We need to improve the meals," Deshui said.
Sarah raised an eyebrow. "In deep space?"
"We have a storage bay. Marcus said yesterday there were some 'surprises' in there." Deshui headed for the lounge door. "Lina, go find something normal to eat—for now, if that's possible. Doctor, come with me."
The storage bay was located in the aft section of the ship, accessible through a corridor where the lights flickered erratically. Along the way, they ran into Professor Zhao Ming, who was lying flat on the deck, measuring the gap between two floor plates with a caliper.
"The crack is widening," the professor said without looking up. "By 0.02 millimeters compared to yesterday. At this rate, in seventy-two hours it will reach 0.5 millimeters, at which point internal air pressure leakage efficiency will be—"
"Professor," Deshui interrupted, "we're on our way to improve the food. Care to join us?"
Zhao stood up and adjusted his glasses. "The efficiency model of the food synthesizer indicates a maximum output of only 87% of standard nutritional rations. There's limited room for improvement unless—" His eyes suddenly lit up. "You've found non-synthetic food reserves?"
"Possibly."
The storage bay door had to be opened manually—the automatic system was dead. Deshui spun the wheel lock with force, metal grinding harshly against metal. When the door slid open, a wave of stale dust and old metal smell rushed out.
It was dark inside. Sarah turned on her flashlight, the beam sweeping across mountains of stacked cargo crates. Most labels were faded, but some words were still readable:
[Spare Parts][Experimental Equipment][Archive Storage]
"Marcus said the surprise was in the left corner," Deshui said, leading the way in.
They wove through the piles, footsteps echoing in the enclosed space. Zhao recorded observations as he walked. "Ambient temperature 14.3 degrees Celsius. Humidity 32%. These conditions are unsuitable for long-term organic storage unless special processing was applied—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
The flashlight beam reached the left corner. There were no crates there—only several old-style cryogenic storage units, the kind that required independent power. Even more surprising, beside them stood a small hydroponics rack. Its LED grow lights were still glowing faintly.
Deshui approached. A handwritten note was taped to the control panel of the first unit, the scrawled handwriting barely legible:
DO NOT TOUCH. UNLESS YOU'RE STARVING. —Previous Owner
"Previous owner?" Sarah frowned.
"This ship's had many captains," Deshui said. "The last official one disappeared five years ago. After the military reclaimed the ship, it sat in a warehouse." He opened the first unit.
Cold air spilled out. Inside were neatly stacked vacuum-sealed packages: real flour, rice, legumes, even several blocks of frozen meat. The dates showed they were three years old—right at the edge of shelf life, but intact.
The second unit contained spices and seasonings: salt, sugar, various dried herbs, and several bottles of oil.
The third unit made them all freeze.
Alcohol.
Not synthetic substitutes, but real liquor in glass bottles. Whiskey, vodka, rum, even two bottles of red wine with faded labels. No branding—likely homemade.
"This violates regulations," Sarah said immediately. "Non-medical alcohol storage is prohibited on spacecraft."
"Regulations also forbid unauthorized departure," Deshui said, lifting a bottle of whiskey and holding it up to the light. "Yet here we are."
Professor Zhao had already moved to the hydroponics rack. "This is a modified space hydroponics system using circulating nutrient solution. They're growing… lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and chili peppers." He carefully touched a lettuce leaf. "Healthy growth. Someone has been tending these recently."
Deshui looked around. The storage bay was chaotic, but this corner was immaculate. No dust on the units. The nutrient tanks were full. There were even signs the floor had been swept.
"Amir," Deshui said softly.
A faint sound came from the shadows. Amir Hassan slowly emerged, sitting atop a crate, holding a paper book—apparently a poetry collection.
"How long have you been living here?" Deshui asked.
"Three months," Hassan said, closing the book. "The base dormitories are too loud. It's quiet here."
"You've been taking care of all this?"
"Food is a resource. Resources require management." Hassan stepped to the hydroponics rack and adjusted the LED brightness. "The grow light spectrum was wrong. I fixed it. Photosynthesis efficiency is up eighteen percent."
Sarah stared at him. "You know how to do this?"
"I grew up on an agricultural colony," Hassan said simply. But Deshui caught something in his eyes—a brief flash of truth from a man who usually lived in shadows. "The colony's gone now. No place left for farming skills, so I learned others."
Silence settled over the room.
"So," Deshui finally said, "we can improve the meals?"
Hassan nodded. "Flour can be made into bread. The meat can be stewed after thawing. Spices are sufficient. But we need someone who can cook."
All three of them looked at Deshui.
"Don't look at me," Deshui raised his hands. "My specialty is heating nutrient blocks to barely edible temperatures."
Sarah sighed. "On the front lines, I only know how to make battlefield emergency meals—boil everything together and make sure it's sterile."
Zhao adjusted his glasses. "I've studied the chemical transformations of cooking, but my practical experience is limited to laboratory hot plates."
Lina's voice came from the doorway. "I can."
She stepped inside, her face pale in the flashlight beam. "At the Information Warfare Center, there was an old cook—a retired fleet mess officer. He taught me a few dishes. Said intelligence work still requires feeding yourself properly, because a hungry brain doesn't think straight."
She checked the supplies. "Flour, yeast… we can make fermented bread, but it'll take six to eight hours. The meat needs time to thaw. Tonight, we can start with tomato and chili soup with toasted bread—if you don't mind keeping it simple."
Deshui looked at her and suddenly saw her in a new dimension. "Are you sure? We still have navigation prep—"
"People need to eat," Lina interrupted, already pulling items from storage. "Good food clears the mind. And," she paused, "when I'm cooking, I can't look at data. It forces me to rest. The old cook insisted."
Sarah nodded. "That makes sense. Fatigue degrades judgment. I'll help—at least to maintain hygiene."
"I can calculate optimal fermentation temperature and timing," Zhao said. "And monitor nutritional ratios."
Hassan was already clearing space in the center of the bay, moving crates aside to reveal an old metal worktable. "This can be a temporary kitchen."
Deshui watched them and suddenly laughed. "Alright. I'll tell the others there's good news for dinner. And I'll check on Ivan and Marcus—before jump, the engines need to be one hundred percent reliable."
As he left, he glanced back.
Lina was checking the flour. Sarah was disinfecting the work surface. Zhao was calculating water temperature and fermentation time. Hassan was arranging utensils. The scene was unexpectedly harmonious—four problematic individuals, each in their own field, cooperating simply to make a meal.
Maybe that was this team's way forward, Deshui thought. Not in grand mission objectives, but in these small, shared moments of doing something concrete together.
The cockpit was a different world entirely.
Ivan Petrov sat in the pilot's seat, eyes fixed on the star chart ahead, hands resting on the controls like a statue. He had been sitting like that for two hours—testing ship response, memorizing the resistance of every control lever, calculating propellant consumption curves.
Marcus Chen worked at the engineer's station beside him, his display split into over a dozen windows showing the reactor, jump drive, life support, and other subsystem data. He chewed on an energy bar—no better than a nutrient block—and his fingers flew across the virtual keyboard.
When Deshui entered, Marcus had just completed a diagnostic cycle.
"Good news and bad news," the engineer said without looking up. "Which first?"
"Bad."
"The jump drive calibrator is indeed broken—and worse than I thought. It's not software; it's physical damage. The flux coil has microfractures. Each time we generate a jump field, the cracks widen slightly, causing field distortion. That's why every jump drifts off course."
Deshui frowned. "Can it be fixed?"
"That's the good news." Marcus finally turned around, grease-smudged and exhausted, but his eyes shone. "We don't need to fix it. We can bypass it."
Ivan spoke up, calm and steady. "Jumping without a calibrator is unsafe. Alliance Regulation—"
"—Article 137, Clause 4," Marcus finished for him. "All jumps must use certified calibration systems. But that regulation is based on fifty-year-old tech. Modern control algorithms can compensate for field distortion in real time, provided we have a sufficiently precise field-monitoring system."
He pulled up a schematic. "Look. Old Bones uses an older model, but it has redundant sensor arrays—originally for scientific observation. Their precision is ten times higher than standard calibrators. I can reprogram the main computer to read sensor data directly and adjust jump parameters on the fly."
Ivan considered for a few seconds. "Success rate?"
"Eighty-seven percent, theoretically," Marcus said. "But someone will need to manually fine-tune during the jump. There's a 0.05-second delay between sensor input and control output. If field fluctuations exceed threshold during that window, human intervention is required."
Both men looked at Deshui.
"Ivan, can you do the adjustments?" Deshui asked.
The former marine's lips curved slightly—the closest thing to a smile Deshui had seen. "I've done harder things in simulators. During one fleet exercise, my landing craft's jump drive failed. I manually stabilized the field for twelve minutes until we reached target orbit."
"And the result?" Deshui already knew, but wanted to hear it.
"Successful insertion. Target destroyed. The commander gave me a commendation—and then reassigned me to forklift duty. Because I shouldn't have been able to do that. It 'exceeded the theoretical performance limits of the equipment.'"
Deshui smiled. "So you can do it."
"I can," Ivan said. "With Marcus's system."
Marcus was already coding again. "Three hours to first test. We'll do a short-range jump—half a light-year—to check stability."
"Approved," Deshui said. "Also, dinner news. Real food in storage. Lina's making soup and bread."
Marcus dropped his energy bar. "Real bread? Fermented?"
"Yes."
The engineer's eyes grew suspiciously wet. "The last time I ate real bread was… four years ago. Fleet bread is synthetic starch with leavening agents. It leaves a plastic aftertaste."
"Seven p.m. in the lounge," Deshui said, then looked at Ivan. "You're coming too. Sitting eight hours straight is bad for circulation, and you'll need energy. Manual field stabilization is mentally exhausting."
Ivan hesitated, then nodded.
As Deshui left the cockpit, he heard Marcus humming—badly off-key, but unmistakably happy.
The medical bay had been divided into two areas: one standard medical facility, the other a temporary isolation room Sarah had set up. Qiu sat outside the isolation area, watching the doctor work.
"Not going to the observation deck?" Sarah asked, assembling an air filtration unit.
"The lighting here is interesting," Qiu said. The medical bay lights were cold white, but at certain angles refracted faint iridescence—likely due to aging fixtures.
Sarah glanced at her. This woman was always a mystery. Blank file, few words, extraordinary perception. The day before, while Sarah was organizing medication, Qiu had glanced over and said, "The bottle in the third row, second position has a slightly different label color." Sarah checked—it was indeed from a different batch, with a different active concentration.
"You can see color differences?" Sarah had asked.
"I can see wavelength distributions," Qiu replied calmly. "Your eyes distinguish three primary colors. Mine distinguish twelve."
Sarah hadn't pressed. In deep space, everyone had secrets. Pressing too hard shattered fragile balance.
Now, Qiu watched Sarah work and said suddenly, "You're worried."
Sarah's screwdriver paused. "About what?"
"That signal. 'Do not trust.'"
Sarah continued working, but her movements slowed. "Yes. On the battlefield, when soldiers send warnings like that, it usually means they've encountered something beyond conventional understanding—not an enemy, but a fundamental anomaly."
"For example?"
Sarah set down her tools and removed her gloves. "I've handled xenobiological contact cases. Most are poisoning, infection, or physiological rejection. But once, on a border colony, an exploration team found a microorganism. It didn't attack humans. It… altered the environment."
She poured water and took a sip. "Specifically, compounds it secreted changed local physical constants. Around the colony, light speed dropped by 0.0001%. The gravitational constant increased by 0.00007%. Tiny differences, but measurable. Worse, two team members said they 'felt wrong'—they could sense the changes, like a sixth sense."
"And then?"
"The colony command declared it a measurement error. The team was reassigned. Samples destroyed. I insisted on submitting a full report—and was removed from frontline medical duty." Sarah looked at Qiu. "So when I saw 'do not trust,' I wondered: did they encounter something similar? Or worse?"
Qiu was silent for a long time. Then she said, "I believe you."
"Why?"
"Because you aren't lying. Your pupil dilation, vocal frequency, body temperature changes are all within honest parameters." Qiu stood. "And you built the isolation room carefully. You're not just completing a task. You're trying to protect us."
She paused at the door. "The soup is almost ready. The ventilation carries the scent. Chili and tomato. And basil. Lina added basil."
Sarah froze. "You can tell spices through the ventilation system?"
"I can distinguish volatile organic compounds." Qiu said. "A gift. Or a defect. Depends how you see it."
She left.
Sarah sat for a while, thinking of Qiu's words, the signal, the coming jump. Then she resumed assembling the filter, her hands steadier than before.
The lounge table was spotless—Hassan's quiet work. A large pot of tomato-chili soup sat at the center, steaming, its rich red surface releasing the scent of vegetables and spices. Beside it was a basket of toasted bread slices, golden and brushed with a thin layer of garlic oil, perfectly crisp.
Lina stood by the pot, ladle in hand, looking nervous. "I did my best. The chili might be a bit much—"
"Smells amazing," Deshui said, taking the first seat and ladling himself a bowl. He blew on it and took a sip.
Everyone watched him.
The soup was hot, but as the flavor exploded in his mouth, Deshui felt his eyes sting. This wasn't just hot soup—it was real food, cooked by human hands. The chili's heat, the tomato's acidity and sweetness, the faint aroma of basil. The rough bread soaked up the broth, softening, releasing wheat sweetness and toasted fragrance. After three days of bland nutrient blocks that literally sounded like wood, this was heaven.
"Good," Deshui said simply, his voice hoarse.
That seemed to be the signal. Everyone sat, ladled soup, grabbed bread. For a while, the only sounds were cutlery and swallowing.
Marcus ate fastest, nearly burying his face in the bowl before letting out a long, satisfied sigh. "My taste buds… they're still alive."
Ivan ate slowly, deliberately, chewing each bite. He said nothing, but Deshui noticed his perpetually furrowed brow relax slightly.
Professor Zhao ate while recording. "Lycopene and capsaicin solubility in hot soup… vitamin C retention seems high… the molecular structural differences between this and synthetic food—"
"Professor," Sarah interrupted gently, "maybe don't analyze while eating."
Zhao blinked, then set aside his data pad with an embarrassed smile. "Habit."
Qiu sat in the corner, sipping soup in small mouthfuls, eyes half-closed as if parsing each flavor.
Hassan ate quietly but took an extra slice of bread.
"Lina," Sarah raised her ladle, "does this soup have a name?"
Lina paused mid-sip of water. "The old cook called it 'Deep Space Warming Soup.' Said that after too long on a ship, people get cold from the inside out, and you need something hot and spicy to warm the soul back up."
"Fitting," Deshui said. The warmth spread from his core outward, easing even the vague dread of endless deep space.
Midway through the meal, conversation naturally turned to business.
Marcus wiped his bowl with bread. "The jump test system is ready. We can initiate anytime. But I want to run one more full simulation using last night's engine vibration data for parameter correction."
Ivan nodded. "Agreed. The simulation should include worst-case scenarios: gravitational microlensing or cosmic ray bursts could push field fluctuations beyond expectations."
"The probability of gravitational microlensing is under three in a million," Zhao added, "but given several high-density dark matter regions along our route, it could rise to about one in a thousand. I can recalculate the star chart to avoid them."
Deshui looked at Lina. "Any new findings on the Gray Falcon's signal?"
"Yes." Lina set her bowl down. "I reanalyzed the noise background of the signal carrier. Normally, deep-space comms overlay fixed cosmic microwave background patterns as timestamps and checksums. But the Gray Falcon's signal… the noise pattern is wrong."
"How so?" Sarah asked.
"It's too clean." Lina displayed waveforms. "Here, where random noise should be, there's near-fractal repetition. Like the signal was filtered or modulated by something structured during transmission. Not a natural phenomenon."
Silence fell.
"Artificial?" Deshui asked.
"Or a natural phenomenon we don't understand—but it has characteristics of intelligent design," Lina said softly. "More strangely, I've seen similar fractal patterns in old Information Warfare Center archives. Ultra-classified early FTL experiment reports mentioned 'hyperspatial residual interference patterns.' But those files were annihilation-class. I only saw a blurred screenshot in a security briefing."
"Annihilation-class?" Marcus frowned. "Meaning if it leaks, both people and data get 'annihilated'?"
"Essentially." Lina powered down the display. "I don't know more. But the pattern family resemblance is there."
A chill crept up Deshui's neck. This mission ran far deeper than expected.
"We need caution," Sarah said. "If the signal itself is compromised, or carries informational contamination—"
"I ran isolation analysis," Lina said. "All signal data is stored on physically isolated servers. No connection to the main network. Analysis terminals wipe and reset after each use."
Qiu suddenly spoke. "The chili in the soup came from the plants that grew best after Hassan adjusted the LED spectrum."
The abrupt shift stunned everyone. Hassan nodded. "Yes. The spectrum was closer to home-star light. Secondary metabolites—like capsaicin—increased."
"So changing conditions changes outcomes," Qiu said, looking at Deshui. "Signals are the same. They're received by Old Bones' antenna, decoded by our systems, and presented to us. If reception or decoding conditions change, will what we see also change?"
Deshui considered this. "Lina, what if we use a different decoding protocol—or even treat it as analog? Listen to the raw carrier?"
Lina's eyes lit up. "I haven't tried that. I've only used standard text parsing. But if we process it as sound or image…" She stood immediately. "I'll try now."
"After you finish eating," Deshui said gently but firmly. "The soup's getting cold."
Lina hesitated, then sat back and finished her bowl.
The meal lasted forty minutes—the longest collective activity since departure. When it ended, Marcus volunteered to clean, dropping three spoons in the process. Hassan silently took over washing. Sarah checked everyone's complexion, ensuring no allergies or discomfort.
Deshui stood by the observation window. Outside lay the eternal stars—cold, distant. Behind him, the clink of dishes, low conversation, and Marcus's off-key humming formed a warm, fragile human space.
They were a group of discarded "problem cases" on an aging ship, chasing a signal that might herald disaster. The future was uncertain. Danger lurked everywhere.
But at least tonight, they had eaten well.
An hour later, Lina summoned Deshui to the comms bay.
Her screen no longer showed text, but two waveform images. On the left was the standard decoded carrier. On the right was an audio-processed visualization.
"I tried multiple algorithms," Lina said, barely containing excitement. "This treats it as low-frequency sound. See the repeating spike structure? This corresponds to the 'do not trust' segment."
Deshui stared. In the audio visualization, the "do not trust" section formed a strange, rotating vortex-like pattern, while other sections remained relatively flat.
"Doesn't it look like something spinning? Or being twisted?" he asked.
"Yes." Lina pulled up another image. "This is more aggressive processing. I assumed nonlinear spacetime distortion and used a general-relativity-based comms model for deconvolution. This is the result."
The new image resembled abstract art: elongated, distorted concentric circles, with a dark central region that seemed to swallow everything.
"What is that?" Deshui felt cold.
"I don't know," Lina admitted. "But it's beyond normal interference or noise. It looks like… a mark. Or a scar."
She zoomed into the dark center. "Here—under every processing method, this area is blank. No information. No noise. Pure nothing. As if the signal was erased passing through it."
"'Do not trust'…" Deshui murmured. "Were they warning us that the signal itself can't be trusted? Or that the carrier—the thing transmitting it—is compromised?"
"Possibly." Lina rubbed her temples. "I need more time, more approaches. Maybe combine this with Professor Zhao's astrophysics—see if the distortion matches known spacetime phenomena."
"Do it," Deshui said. "But isolate every step. If this signal carries contamination, we keep it bottled."
Lina nodded, eyes alight. This was her domain—puzzles, data, truths hidden beneath appearances.
Deshui left the comms bay, heading for the cockpit. Marcus and Ivan should be ready for the jump test.
Passing the medical bay, he saw Sarah still working, filling the isolation chamber buffer with a new gel. Qiu sat nearby, holding an old circuit board from storage, fingers tracing its etched patterns.
"Qiu," Sarah said without looking up, "the third-row contact on that board has residual current. Don't touch it. A capacitor might not be fully discharged."
Qiu's hand froze midair. "How do you know?"
"Instruments," Sarah gestured to an electromagnetic detector. "You seem sensitive to electric fields?"
Qiu didn't answer. She set the board down.
Deshui didn't interrupt and moved on.
In the cockpit, Marcus and Ivan were in position. The main screen showed a jump countdown: fifteen minutes.
"Final simulation passed," Marcus said. "Success probability is now 89.3%. Ivan manually corrected seven field fluctuations in simulation—all stabilized."
"Real jumps have more variables," Ivan said calmly. "But I'm ready."
Deshui strapped into the captain's seat. "Target?"
"Blank region half a light-year out," Ivan marked a point on the chart. "No massive bodies, off main lanes. Jump duration eight seconds. We'll be outside standard comms range, but Old Bones' beacon will continuously broadcast our quantum state fingerprint. In theory, base can track us."
"In theory?"
"The beacon's twenty-year-old too," Marcus shrugged. "Efficiency is sixty percent of modern models. If field distortion is severe, quantum entanglement may decohere temporarily. Base will receive a 'signal lost' alert."
Deshui nodded. "Proceed."
The countdown continued. The cockpit fell silent save for the hum of machinery.
Deshui thought of the Gray Falcon, the distorted signal, the warning: do not trust. They were stepping into the same unknown.
Countdown reached zero.
"Jump drive ignition," Ivan's voice was rock-steady. "Field generation… stable. Three, two, one—"
Outside, stars stretched into lines, then shattered into indescribable colors.
Deshui's stomach dropped as if falling from height. A low-frequency resonance pierced his bones—not sound, but space itself vibrating.
On the main screen, the geometric jump-field diagram fluctuated violently. Red alarms flared along the edges.
"Field distortion exceeding threshold!" Marcus shouted. "Ivan!"
Ivan's hand was already on the micro-adjustment lever, veins standing out, movements precise. Push. Rotate. Push again. The red zones began to shrink. The field struggled back toward stability.
But the resonance grew louder. Deshui's teeth vibrated.
Then he saw it—
Not through the viewport, but exploding directly in his mind:
A massive, dark red planet suspended within shattered rings. Its surface was veined with writhing, blood-vessel-like patterns. At the center of those patterns lay a deep depression—and inside it, something rested.
It resembled a spacecraft, but was pierced, wrapped, and entangled by countless black, branch-like structures. Like an insect trapped in amber. Or a heart consumed by parasites.
The image lasted an instant.
The jump ended.
Stars snapped back into place. The ship shuddered lightly, returning to real space.
"Arrived at target coordinates," Ivan reported, breathing slightly fast. "Error 0.0003 light-years, within tolerance. Jump drive cooling."
Marcus exhaled and slumped back. "We did it… damn. The field nearly collapsed. Ivan, how did you—"
Ivan didn't answer. He stared at his hands, trembling faintly.
Deshui unbuckled and stood. Cold sweat soaked his back. That image—hallucination? Jump-induced neural stress? Or—
"Did either of you…" His voice was dry. "See anything during the jump?"
Marcus shook his head. "See? I only saw a nightmare of numbers."
Ivan looked up, eyes sharp. "I saw a red planet. And a destroyed ship."
The cockpit went dead silent.
Deshui's heart sank. Not a hallucination.
Ivan had seen it too.
At that moment, the comms panel flashed urgent red. Lina's voice burst from the speakers, shaken with fear:
"Deshui! Get to the comms bay now! The jump— the jump triggered a hidden signal! The Gray Falcon's full-spectrum distress beacon just activated! The source is—"
She paused, as if the word itself took effort to say.
"—the exact region of space we just jumped out of. It's been there all along, attached to our ship's signal. We… we brought it with us."