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Short Ride In A Stealth Machine

RIV

If Riv Sable had been superstitious and understood what this run to the shadow rim portended, he might have torn apart the sector altogether.

Still, he prided himself on being a meta who kept his word and solved problems with rational and factual logic.

He’d no time for illusory mythic notions and folklore.

Nevertheless, his meta instincts churned like a beacon in superstition’s night, a loaded foretelling packed with omens of foreboding.

The alarms in his corvette blared, triggered by a series of bizarre incidents.

Seen apart, they were astonishing. Together, they were a harbinger, a screaming warning of what was to come.

First, a single, high burst of energy, an ancient blazar, rocked the hull.

‘Tis the tail end of a flare flung into space billions of years earlier, catapulted from a supermassive black hole that consumed all existence around it,’ Mirage intoned.

The dark-skinned synthetic creature sat beside Riv at the helm of the Rider’s gunship, Glimmer.

The android construct, a node of the original AI that resided on Eden II, was an arresting sight. The figure blended masculine and feminine, evident in its short, shorn hair and a diamond-encrusted jumpsuit. Bright energy streams shimmered beneath its ebony skin, and its jade-green eyes shone with life and vitality.

‘Shall we take a closer look?’ the AI asked.

Riv shook his head, gazing with narrowed eyes at the fading phenomenon as inertia dampers took over, stabilizing their flight. ‘Carry on, nothing to see.’

Until they came across an unusual solo star that winked at them. The lone phenomenon, XTC 846285, dipped in brightness at irregular intervals and for odd lengths.

‘Some theories posit that it hides an alien mega-structure,’ Mirage murmured as they stared at it through the viewscreen. ‘Others believe the orb to be surrounded by an abnormal ring of diamonds. One that refracts light in shards of prismatic glory through time and space.’

Soon after, they chanced on a long stream of infrared brightness from a rare nonpareil 800 light-years away. It flared for hours before burning out - another unexplained mystery.

Last of all, someone was hunting them down.

Riv had scratched at the tickle of warning on the back of his neck for some time now.

Mirage soon confirmed his premonition. ‘We’re not alone. Tis good to have some company around in this lovely back-ass of nowhere, even though they’re a lurker.’

The AI delivered the statement with cheer, revealing a luminous white smile.

‘We’re never alone,’ Riv drawled, his rasped voice muted by the layers of cabling above his head as he lay under one of the bridge stations.

His hands twisted conduits into the ship’s ever-growing surveillance machinery. ‘For one, you’re always on myfokkin’ back.’

Mirage bristled, a warning flashing across their stunning biometric eyes. ‘I mean, we have an outside escort.’

‘Do share.’

‘A small Galaxy skiff. Old. Maybe over thirty years old. It’s a junk boat that someone’s maintained on a regular basis for it to fly still. It probably can’t bolt into FTL with its deteriorating engine, so it’s most likely local to the System.’

‘Can you ID it?’

Mirage sucked their perfect android teeth. ‘It’s too far off and using a few defensive maneuvers. They’re dipping in and out of the asteroid belts, making it hard to catch its livery through our cams.’

The same cameras Riv used to scour the System’s hundreds of millions of IDs for one single face.