The ship's interior was quieter now, save for the soft thrum of its engines. Kaelen sat at the navigation console, the data crystal glowing in his hand. The alien signal still pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat synced with the void.
Lyra leaned against the bulkhead, arms crossed. She had changed course after their jump, threading them through backchannels of FTL space—routes smugglers whispered about but rarely survived. Her casual stance belied the razor-sharp alertness in her eyes.
"So," she said, breaking the silence, "you've got a rock that sings to you in alien code. Care to show me?"
Kaelen hesitated. Trust was a currency he couldn't afford to spend recklessly. Yet he couldn't deny that without Lyra, he'd already be a corpse floating above Earth. Slowly, he slotted the crystal into the ship's interface.
The holo-display flickered to life. A swirl of stars filled the cabin, constellations bending and reordering until a singular cluster burned brighter than the rest. The coordinates hung suspended in space, glowing with alien glyphs that no human language could match.
Lyra whistled softly. "That's deep. Beyond the frontier colonies. No charts, no safe ports. Just dark."
Kaelen's eyes shone with a fire she hadn't seen before. "Which means no corporation has reached it yet. This… this could be the first untouched contact with something beyond us."
Her smirk faltered into something more serious. She pushed away from the wall and walked closer, the stars painting her face in cold light. "Or it could be bait. You ever think of that?"
Kaelen's jaw clenched. He had thought of it—countless times. But obsession dulled caution. He turned his gaze back to the swirling glyphs.
"Every discovery worth making carries risk. You of all people should understand that."
Lyra studied him for a long moment, then laughed, shaking her head. "Damn, you really are the mad genius they say you are."
Before Kaelen could answer, the ship shuddered violently. A warning siren blared, crimson light flooding the cabin.
"Contact!" Lyra barked, sprinting back to the cockpit. "Someone tracked the jump."
Kaelen's blood ran cold. "Impossible—they couldn't have followed through uncharted currents."
"Tell that to the three blips on our tail," she shot back, hands flying over the controls.
The holo-display flickered, showing three sleek interceptors piercing through the slipstream. Corporate design—fast, ruthless, armed to the teeth.
Lyra snarled under her breath. "Damn vultures."
Kaelen gripped the console. If they were caught, the corporations would strip him of the crystal and erase him from existence. The secret would vanish with him.
"What do we do?" he asked.
Lyra's grin returned—sharp, wild, almost exhilarating.
"We run. And if running doesn't work—" she flipped a switch, and the ship's underbelly roared with awakened cannons—
"we fight."
The stars blurred as the chase began.