The air in the lower docking sector was thick with scorched metal and the sickening ozone tang of overcharged circuits.
Burning shuttles lay half-melted in their cradles, torn open by directed blasts or sabotage. Panels sparked wildly, venting clouds of gas that pulsed with red light in the low-pressure gloom. A gutted transport lay sideways across the far platform, smoke curling up from its cockpit like incense from a battlefield.
Ethan stepped over a charred limb.
He didn't flinch.
He moved with practiced calm, eyes scanning every shadow, every vented crack, every flickering emergency strip that might reveal movement. His coat was ash-streaked, one arm still slick with dried blood, but his grip on the containment case holding the Gryllex shard was tight. Unyielding.
"Iris," he murmured, "status?"
"Three functioning auxiliary pods remain in Bay Six-C. All under remote lockdown. One shows partial security override, likely a failed escape attempt."
"Can you get me in?"
"Already infiltrating power routes. Routing priority now. Four seconds."
He turned the corner toward Bay Six-C, boots silent on the scorched deck.
The auxiliary pod in question was sleek, civilian-grade with reinforced plating, its hull singed but intact. Its boarding ramp hung slightly ajar, held open by a failed hydraulic. Someone had tried to launch… and didn't finish.
Ethan reached the ramp. Hand on the support frame. The hatch lights flashed red, then flickered blue.
"Reroute complete," Iris said.
"Get us in. Quiet and fast."
The hatch slid open with a hydraulic hiss and no alarm. He stepped inside.
The cockpit smelled of ionized metal and emergency seals. A quick check showed the nav-board intact. Main systems were fried in patches, but the manual flight core was untouched. He tossed the containment case into the lockbox beneath the pilot seat and ran his fingers across the console.
"Iris, give me a three-minute vector. Low signature, debris masking."
"Plotting now. Your current orbital drift places you behind the bulk of the pirate fleet. However, a Silica Arc corvette is within 200 meters. Timing will be key."
Ethan adjusted the pilot harness. Hands on the manual throttle.
"Let's roll the dice."
He pushed the release.
The pod lurched forward, breaking loose from the damaged docking clamp. It spun slightly before stabilizers kicked in. His fingers danced across the interface, overriding safeties. He cut the external lights, rerouted power to engines, and dropped into a low-thrust drift. Invisible to short-range scans, masked by the wreckage tumbling around the burning station.
Through the front viewport, the void exploded with light.
Xanthe's Dream burned like a falling star.
Massive fractures glowed along its outer hull. The elegant observation decks, once filled with decadent rich folk and expensive relics, were now blackened ribs of alloy.
Debris spun outward in waves, fragments of expensive architecture, splintered ships, and bodies both armored and bare.
Beyond it, ships fought.
Silica Arc security vessels, with their angled gray hulls and plasma flares, clashed with a pirate fleet, jagged, quick, and dangerous. The pirates weren't disorganized. They moved in strike tactics and coordinated pincer formations. Pulse cannons and laser flak ignited across the dark.
More telling: some of the attackers weren't marked.
Private escort ships, likely belonging to rich buyers from the auction, had joined the fight. Some were defending Xanthe's Dream. Others were trying to carve a corridor for escape.
It wasn't a random assault.
Ethan's eyes tracked movement, noting identifiers, timing patterns, comm bursts on encrypted bands.
This had been planned. Financed. Directed.
And still… it was falling apart.
They'd underestimated the response. Or overreached.
Maybe they hadn't expected the molecular blade to trigger such a heavy lockdown. Maybe the chaos from the creatures or the escapees disrupted the flow. Or maybe someone high up panicked and hit the wrong failsafe.
Didn't matter.
It was too late for them now.
And for Ethan, it was just far enough.
The pod broke orbit slowly, slipping like a shadow through the wreckage field left in the wake of Xanthe's Dream's unraveling. External shielding hissed with strain as it skimmed the edge of a destabilized gravity pocket left by the station's emergency vent systems.
Outside, the void was chaos, pulse blasts, debris rings, the burning wrecks of small ships and scorched sensor buoys tumbling silently. Laser fire arced in sharp streaks across his periphery, lancing between security patrols and fleeing craft.
One narrow bolt of red streaked too close, a clean hit against the starboard sensor cluster. It melted on impact, sending a brief flicker through the pod's display system as the outer panel hissed and blackened.
Ethan didn't flinch.
His hands moved with quiet precision. He nudged the pod sideways, falling back on instinct. Not dodging, just flowing, weaving beneath a lattice of shattered satellite casings and fragmented hull plating. He rode the gaps between trajectories like a knife finding its sheath, slow and deliberate.
"Proteus orbital customs perimeter breached," Iris said in his ear, her tone perfectly level. "Pursuit probability: low. No active tracking signatures. Orbital beacons returning to passive status."
Ethan allowed himself a breath.
Not a sigh. Not relief.
Just the sharp exhale of a man who had finished a dangerous sprint, and was now slowing his heart before the next one.
He reached up.
Unfastened the half-face mask that had sealed around his cheekbones, voice-slick with synthetic vocal polish. Navren Cole, the wealthy, quiet systems analyst with an impeccable digital history and a taste for high-end items of all kind.
He peeled the mask away and dropped it onto the console.
It fell with a metallic clink, rolling once before settling on its side like a dead shell. Something hollow. Emptied.
Ethan looked at it for a long second, then looked ahead.
Behind him, Xanthe's Dream burned.
No longer an auction house. No longer a sanctuary of excess or shadow deals. Just a fractured mass of alloy and flame, bloating outward like a slow, dying sun. From this distance, it looked almost beautiful, if you didn't know what was inside. If you didn't count the bodies or the secrets.
To Ethan, it looked like a story closing itself.
He adjusted his grip on the flight yoke, fingers tightening.
"Let the Federation higher-ups in this sector clean up the mess," he muttered, voice low and steady.
Ethan had his shard. He had his ship. He had his silence.
That was enough.
He angled the pod downward, slipping from the orbital burn path into Proteus' high-atmo access corridor, just under the automated patrol scan arc. Iris had already populated the pod's outbound manifest with clean credentials, lifted from a now-defunct mining contract tied to a ghost company registered on Kirel-4.
Fake paperwork.
Fake flight record.
A fake man, leaving a real conflict over a semi-mythical relic.
Below, the lights of Proteus shimmered through clouded layers of synthetic weather shielding. The planet-sized shipyard loomed like a dream in steel and fire, tethered cranes, orbital elevators, scaffolded continents of plasma refineries and neon-lit corporate barracks.
It breathed industry and secrecy, layered like sediment.
And somewhere inside that metallic heart, deep in Docking Sector 17-Delta, the Obsidian Wraith waited for it's captain Ethan Walker.
And as far as the galaxy was concerned… Navren Cole died in the fire.