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Chapter 1
Chapter One: Scavenger’s Oath
Ilex Var knew better than to take the beam bridge alone, but the ring was whispering.
He’d slipped past dock monitors with a faked transponder and a smile, telling his old captain he was going to check the damaged tug’s power couplings. He did check them—superficially—then drifted in his suit along a threaded line toward the abandoned halo that crouched over the gas giant like a broken crown.
No one paid attention to a rogue engineer when a gas giant held storms the size of continents. No one listened when he said the ring had a heartbeat.
He felt it through his boots the moment he stepped onto the station’s spine. A vibrato through dead metal. Not power; not vibration damping. Something else.
He ran his glove along a seam and shone his helmet light into a ribbed corridor. Everything smelled like old vacuum—metal, frost, a hint of air that had sat too long. The hatches read in a language older than any registry. He filed the shapes away automatically, promising he’d ask Archivist Lho about them later. Lho had a way of making dead things talk without breaking them.
Ilex’s own way ran opposite. He pushed, and things woke.
Three junctions in, a shielded hatch presented a problem he enjoyed. He built bypass tools for a living. He knew kiss points and fault lines. He slipped a tap across the hatch’s sensor grid, spoofed a handshake, and heard the bolt retract. Behind, a core chamber waited, quiet and almost polite.
He stepped through, and the whisper became a hum.
