The Wraith's loading ramp hissed open into shadow.
Moon Yora's air was thin and metallic, filtered through decades-old scrubbers that hadn't been serviced since before the last mining crew disappeared.
Mirth Vault unfolded in layers, rusted corridors, creaking gantries, and scavenged alloys stacked into improvised marketplaces beneath the crater's shell. This place was a graveyard repurposed by those too stubborn to die quietly.
Ethan descended the ramp in silence, hood up, a nondescript utility jacket masking his weapons. His steps were measured, his eyes always moving, reading body language, noting exits, tracing threat vectors.
The cloak of anonymity was paper-thin here. People respected privacy, but only until curiosity outweighed caution.
Mirth Vault breathed around him like a machine on its last cycle.
The outer causeways were flanked with makeshift vendor stalls, illuminated by sputtering lights and overhead plasma lines strung like veins across the upper beams. A woman with mirrored eyes bartered, selling heat sinks shaped from warship hull scrap. Down a side corridor, a half-dismantled exo-rig groaned beneath the welders crawling across its joints.
And overhead, buried beneath layers of stone and alloy, a faint psionic hum echoed like background radiation.
"Jammer's active," Iris confirmed. "Standard frequency wash. No direct mental probes or remote scanning will function in this zone."
Good. Ethan preferred it that way.
He kept walking, past black-market tech tables, decoy transmitters, ex-mercs selling hand-tuned plasma rounds out of lunch trays. The Vault was grimy, dangerous, and structured, not by rules, but by reputation. Stupidity got punished. Violence got noticed. Discretion got rewarded.
That was how it survived.
He slipped through a side corridor and descended a grated stairwell until the temperature dropped and the overhead lights turned red. The air smelled like ozone, oil, and cooked metal.
At the bottom sat The Red Circuit, a bar hollowed from collapsed transit shafts and reinforced with salvaged starship ribs. A cracked neon coil pulsed in slow intervals above the entry hatch.
He stepped inside.
The bar was low-lit and crowded, but quiet. Voices were hushed. Eyes were sharp. Drinks came in sealed metal cups to prevent analysis. Music existed only in the faint hum of vibration from the floor plates.
He ordered nothing. Just sat near the far end of the bar, half-shrouded in shadow beneath a cracked coolant pipe dripping condensation into a stained bucket. The air smelled like recycled heat, ozone, and rust.
Ethan listened.
Not to the music, there wasn't any. He listened to conversations, tone. To silences. To the weight of a glance that lasted half a second too long.
A few workers sat huddled over powered drinks near a back table, low laughter occasionally breaking through the ambient drone. Mercs played some kind of card game near the wall, using repurposed circuit boards as chips. Business was happening, but none of it was friendly.
Then someone raised their voice. Not angry—just tired.
"Trask, seriously, either stop moping and drink like a Ghoryan, or pay your tab and get the hell out."
The voice came from behind the bar. A woman with a cybernetic jaw and oil-streaked arms pointed a plated finger toward a stool near the middle.
Ethan's eyes followed it.
That's where he saw him.
The Ghoryan sat hunched over a drink that didn't look like it was meant for his physiology, some kind of red-black suspension oil mixed with vapor coolant. His arms were cybernetic, boxy and thick, but intricately jointed, the ends fitted with tool rigs instead of fingers.
A line of external data ports ran along the back of his exposed neck, and one of his ocular implants was flickering faintly, like it hadn't been recalibrated in a while.
He didn't argue with the barkeep. Didn't lift his head.
Just muttered something in reply and slumped further forward.
Something about him caught Ethan's attention.
Not pity, but utility.
Broken pride was a scent Ethan could recognize from across a room. Especially when it came from someone that used to be respected.
He stood, crossed the bar in a few quiet steps, and transferred a few credits to pay the Ghoryan's tab.
"That ought to cover it," Ethan said quietly.
Trask didn't look up. "You paying for charity now, stranger?"
"No," Ethan said. "I'm paying for conversation. Got a minute Mr...?"
The Ghoryan grunted. "Trask Molten. And it depends on the topic."
"Ship systems. Cloak configurations. Core masking."
That got a reaction.
Trask lifted his head just enough to meet Ethan's eyes. One of his implants zoomed and focused, scanning. The other lagged slightly, out of sync. His lip twitched.
"You're a pilot?"
Ethan just nodded.
"What do you fly?"
"Military-Class Multi-Role Frigate. Quiet, agile. Smarter than it looks."
Trask gave a low, dry laugh. "You want that thing to whisper through sensor nets? You'll need more than credits."
"Maybe I do. Maybe I just wanted to see if the engineer drowning in his own drink knew how to fix one."
The bartender snorted from behind the counter but didn't interfere.
Trask finally turned fully, straightening with a click of mechanical servos in his spine. "Alright, pilot. Let's say I could build the quietest stealth core this side of the Federation. Let's say I still had my shop running full capacity. I'd charge you five times what you're thinking."
Ethan didn't flinch. "But you don't."
The words hung there.
Trask's silence was all the confirmation he needed.
"What happened?" Ethan asked, not as a demand, just curiosity, steady and professional.
Trask exhaled through his teeth. "Iron Veil. Local parasites. Hit my vault during a crew swap two cycles ago. Took half my inventory. Including a prototype resonant phase coil. Can't do stealth work worth a damn without it. And I'm not rebuilding it from junk. That coil was clean."
"Where is it now?"
"They're using it to stabilize a sub-reactor in some half-dead coolant plant down in the industrial guts. No doubt powering their cloaked runs between vaults. No one's ever gotten it back."
Ethan didn't answer right away, but simply asked. "What's the security profile?"
"Loose. But mean. Two watch rotations, internal jammers, patched AI wall. They're not geniuses, but they've got teeth. You get caught, they won't shoot. They strip hardware and trade meat for metal."
"Charming."
Trask grunted. "You get me that coil back, and I'll vanish you from every chart in this galactic sector and beyond. Your ship will be a ghost. Even to ghosts."
Ethan extended his hand. "Then we're in business."
Trask gripped it. "Low-shift starts in six hours. That's your best window. Don't get caught, pilot."
Back aboard the Wraith, Ethan stood at the console, staring at the projected map of Yora's understructure. The coolant plant was deep, old pipes, magnetic tunnels, decaying fusion channels.
"I've flagged possible ingress paths," Iris said. "We'll need to time this perfectly. Your psionics will need to suppress bio-signals once inside the pressure gate."
"Understood."
He looked at the screen for a moment longer, then shut it off.
"Let's make them think a ghost walked in."