Callsign: Wostok Ship: "Obsidian" – Very Heavy Fighter Current Location: Freeport 1, Omega-3
Wostok sat at the bar, his glass half empty, thoughts drifting back to Delta. The Nomads had been more active lately - too active for his liking. He was just considering another Rheinbeer when someone quietly slid onto the stool beside him. The man was subtle, like a shadow. Worn black jacket, the kind that had once been expensive. A flickering dataglass over one eye—Lane Hacker, no doubt.
“You’re Wostok, right?” the stranger asked without looking.
“Depends who’s asking.”
“Someone who knows you’ve lived through worse jobs.”
The Hacker turned a compact holo-terminal toward him. It lit up with blue coordinates. Copernicus system, Darklands.
“A ship went missing out there. Codenamed Livingstone. Old Dromedary, once under our control. Last signal came from the fringes. No life signs. But…” —he tapped the display— “the data she gathered is priceless. And the cargo might be just as valuable.”
“You want me to fly in, fish out the wreck, and make it back in one piece?”
“Yes.” The Hacker looked at him. “We want you alive—with what’s left. The ship is dead. No defenses. But what’s out there? Unknown. You’ll get 2 million credits for recovering the black box.”
Wostok leaned back. The pay was solid. But Copernicus was treacherous—barely charted, filled with radiation pockets, sensor ghosts, and Nomad echoes.
“Sounds like a suicide mission.”
“Maybe. But you strike me as the kind who thrives on that.”
Wostok smirked and downed the rest of his drink.
“Send the coordinates. I’ll leave at first light.”
The Hacker stood, handed him a small data chip without a word, and vanished into the low hum of the bar. Wostok looked at it, then pocketed it. Something heavy settled in his gut.
This one would lead him to places better left untouched.
But that’s what he did.
Somewhere in the Darklands, the Livingstone waited.
Callsign: Wostok Ship: "Obsidian" – Very Heavy Fighter Current Location: Darklands, Copernicus
Dropping out of the Sigma-13 jumphole felt like falling into emptiness—no traffic, no comms, no horizon. Just the still, open vacuum of the Copernicus system.
Wostok leaned back, eyes locked on the HUD. Two planets registered nearby—distant orbs shrouded in silence. Their signatures came and went, no stronger than the static hum of space itself. No stations. No signals. Just ghosts.
Between him and the edge of the Darklands: 60 Klicks.
The space in between was noise—irradiated bursts, overlapping frequencies, echoes of things that might’ve once been real.
His sensors fired warnings in every direction, none of them reliable. None of them staying long enough to matter.
“Blackout area.”
“Visual collapse. Nav system degradation. No stable trajectory. No guarantee of return.”
He pushed the ship’s external lights to full, and the effect was immediate—disappointment. The beams disappeared just beyond the hull, eaten by the darkness. The nebula ahead didn’t ripple. It didn’t shimmer. It waited.
The Obsidian eased forward.
Crossing into the Darklands wasn’t a single moment—it was a change of state.
First, the stars vanished. Then the compass lost its mind. The darkness took shape.
Navigation glitched. Velocity dropped.
He was inside.
And somewhere in Qudrant G7, buried in shadow, the Livingstone lay waiting.
Wostok drifted forward, scanners maxed out—but visibility was a joke. Even his own wings blurred into shadow. Here, distance didn’t exist. Only instinct.
A flicker.
No contact. No clear signature. Just one spike of passive energy—and then nothing.
Was it a sensor fault?
Or someone else?
He cut to manual, ghosting through the mist like a diver through oil.
And then he saw it:
A silhouette.
Still. Massive.
Swallowed by the fog, but clear enough to identify—a Dromedary-class freighter. Intact. No engine trail. No response to hails.
The Livingstone.
He circled once. No breaches. No external damage.
The ship looked untouched. But the sensors were right—no life signs.
Life support was dead. Atmosphere sealed and cold.
Wostok sighed.
The Obsidian couldn’t dock with a Dromedary. No compatible ports.
Time for a walk.
He sealed the suit. Checked his tether. Stepped into the airlock.
As the visor closed, the sound of the ship faded away.
Only breath. And the hiss of oxygen.
The airlock cycled.
He pushed off, floating into the dark. The suit’s lights stabbed forward—barely five meters ahead before vanishing. Everything beyond was thick shadow.
He reached the bridge access. Forced it open. No resistance.
Inside: silence.
Two bodies in the cots—victims of the illness.
And on the bridge: the captain and his first officer. Side by side.
A weapon still gripped in his cold hand.
No escape. No rescue. Just the mission.
Wostok activated the portable scanner, located the black box.
There—behind the nav core, its green light still pulsing.
He reached for it—
A burst of static hit his comms.
Callsign: Wostok Ship: "Obsidian" – Very Heavy Fighter Current Location: Darklands, Copernicus
Wostok moved carefully through the hollow corridors of the ghost ship. The beam of his helmet light cut through the oppressive black, casting long, twitching shadows across the cables and loose fixtures. Each step echoed like a drumbeat in a tomb.
The Blackbox was already secured—small, discreet, tucked into the thigh pocket of his suit. That part had been easy.
But then he found it—in the cargo bay, behind a sealed bulkhead.
A container, locked tight with multiple Lane Hacker encryptions. No serial number. No markings. Just a single faded red warning stripe.
"SILVER FIRE"
The name was faint, stamped into the cold metal. But Wostok knew it. He froze.
A Code weapon—rumored to punch clean through the hull of a fighter. In the hands of a skilled pilot, it was a threat. But in the hands of an entire wing? It was a death sentence.
"Well, well… jackpot," he muttered, smiling.
Inside the crate: a sleek, angular prototype—elegant and deadly. The connectors confirmed it was made for fighters. But the internal build hinted at something else. Something very serious.
Wostok stayed calm. He was used to exotic gear. His Obsidian already housed six custom Code weapons he'd salvaged in the Omicrons. But SILVER FIRE was a game-changer. And worth more credits than he dared to count.
The weapon was too large to carry back manually. Luckily, it was already mounted on an old Hacker cargo rail that led straight to the rear freight airlock.
Wostok unlocked the rail, and the crate began to slide, slow and deliberate. When the airlock opened, the weapon drifted out into space, tagged with a retrieval beacon.
"I’ll be back for you, sweetheart."
Back aboard the Obsidian, he reeled in the container with the tractor beam and locked it down in his cargo hold. Then his eyes turned to the nav-chart.
Time to disappear.
Wostok had opted for the long road. No House territory. No checkpoints. Just clouds, jump holes, and silence.
Sigma-13’s gas fields swallowed his ship whole. His nav systems flickered; ion storms danced across the sensors. In Sigma-17, near the green dwarf star, flickers began showing up on the HUD—tiny contact blips, no ID, no trajectory.
Then… nothing.
Sensor ghosts?
Or something real?
His gut twisted. Power spikes showed intermittently. Too clean, too patterned to be background noise. Someone was out there. Running silent. Tracking him.
Liberty? Rheinland? Both had deep pockets and darker motives.
He activated his Cloaking Device. It drained power—but it gave him breathing room.
As he entered the edge of Omicron Theta, he made a decision:
Freeport-9. Corsair turf.
Not safe. But safer.
At least from the Houses.
Long enough to find out who was after him.
