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The journey to the debris field stretched before her, black, glittering space speckled with wreckage and dust. She leaned back into the seat, the hush wrapping around her like a second skin.

Her mind didn’t stay still.

Questions fired through her thoughts in rhythm with the quiet thrum of the engine.

Who gave the Lombardis the Hades-class missile? How many more of those did they have? Was Signet supplying them? And if so, why?

Her fingers tightened on the control yoke.

She had to know.

The truth, whatever it was, was drifting out in the cold, muted dark.

Ahead, the debris field loomed like a floating graveyard: twisted shards of alloy and hull plating and shimmering clouds of frozen vapor spread over kilometers of silent void.

She throttled down as she entered the wreckage zone, the glint of ruined metal catching starlight and casting phantasmic glimmers across the field.

She killed her exterior lights and drifted, searching the area.

No transponder pings. No signals. Dead space. All good signs for a sly reconnaissance.

Savvine slowed the pinnace down to a stop, so the racer hovered in the void.

Releasing the capsule, she launched into the bone-deep, absolute silence of space that met her hard.

She activated her HUD beams.

The twin cones of white light pierced the darkness as she pushed off the side of the pinnace and glided toward the remains of the Lombardi stealth fighter.

Just ahead, floated the weapons array.

At first glance, it was intact, tumbling in slow motion, a jagged crown of deadly beauty.

It sportedHades-class mounts and modified pulse chambers.

Fokk!This was the illegal tech she needed proof of.

Without thinking, Savvine reached out, her gloved hand trembling as it neared the scorched plating.

A bloom of light flared somewhere to her left.

A flash too white, too close.

Time fractured.

The explosion unfurled like a monstrous flower, tendrils of heat and pressure lashing out toward her in slow-motion brilliance. She barely managed to scream. It tore from her throat, but there was no sound, no echo, only the void.

She was dead, she knew it.

A massive force slammed into her.

Thick, muscled, sinewed limbs wrapped around her torso, one across her waist, the other bracing her shoulders.

She screamed into her comms, but she got no signal in return. No bounce-back.

No sound.

Panic hit like a flash freeze.