The pod drifted through a slow, lethal ballet of twisted wreckage. Outside the narrow viewports, once-functioning machines now floated in silence—shattered lifeboats, torn plating, scorched hull segments with names Kael didn't recognize. The debris field was a graveyard pulled into orbit by a dying planet's gravity, and that orbit was slowly degrading.
The shards of metal spun and creaked, colliding occasionally, their echoes swallowed by the vast silence of space. Each fragment was a ghost of a past life, a failed journey, a lost hope—now just scrap caught in the cruel gravity well.
Kael sat hunched over the console, the pale glow of the displays reflecting off his face. His fingers hovered above the controls, hesitant. The pod's worn hull vibrated faintly with the distant tugs of unseen masses. A subtle reminder: this haven was temporary. The chaos surrounding them was relentless.
"AI," Kael said, voice low, "run a full vector calculation on the debris field. I need a navigable path through this chaos—and a temporary safe zone. Something stable."
"Affirmative. Initiating predictive simulation. Processing surrounding mass trajectories. Mapping gravitational convergence zones. Estimated time to collapse: one hour, forty-seven minutes."
Kael's eyes scanned the schematic as it unfolded. Each chunk of floating mass moved like a shark in murky water—silent, constant, inevitable. The map narrowed down potential regions of stillness amid the storm. The AI marked a pocket in the debris, a zone of relative calm.
"Identified. Safe zone pocket detected near the remains of a refinery rig. Estimated stability duration: six hours. Distance: 4.8 kilometers."
Kael nodded, a small surge of relief. Six hours of calm in this sea of wreckage was a precious gift. That was enough. Just enough.
"Plot a course. Controlled bursts only—we stay subtle. And route the hauler drone for salvage runs. I want everything we missed from the engineering station."
"Understood. Hauler drone prepped. Salvage route recalculated. Expected risk: moderate."
The pod's low-thrust propulsion system hummed to life, nudging them forward with minute corrections. Kael had always hated full burns in tight debris fields—too loud, too fast, too easy to attract attention or shift something massive the wrong way. Controlled bursts were better. Safer. Quieter.
He strapped himself into the harness as the pod glided past a fractured solar sail array, its once-majestic structure now a web of torn gold foil and bent spars.
"Patch the nav feed through internal projection," he muttered.
The pod's interior darkened, then lit up with a translucent, three-dimensional overlay of their surroundings. A sphere of slow death. The projected wreckage glowed red for high-risk paths, blue for cleared routes, and white for unknowns. The safe pocket was a faint green hollow in the chaos—a temporary calm.
Kael watched the hauler drone detach and float ahead of the pod like a cautious scout. It pivoted mid-drift and began its programmed arc toward the fragmented engineering station—the site Kael had partially stripped before the last gravitational shift forced him to retreat.
He leaned back in his seat, trying to ignore the sealed auxiliary AI core resting in its cradle behind him—a constant reminder of the unknown.
Time passed slowly as they maneuvered. Kael's eyes flicked over the pod's core systems one by one.
Life support: Stable.
Power grid: Strong—civilian-grade fusion cell humming with quiet confidence.
Navigation: Still patchy, but usable now that the AI was compensating with predictive drift vectors.
Communications: Still broken.
That last one gnawed at him.
They had power now. Enough to run long-range comms. Enough to reach someone—anyone—if the hardware could be restored. He had spares. Scattered modules retrieved from broken communications buoys and half-melted relay panels. Maybe not enough to rebuild a full array, but maybe enough to scream.
"AI," Kael said, tapping a nearby panel, "start full diagnostics on the communications system. Prioritize relay architecture and long-range amplification."
"Affirmative. Beginning phased diagnostic cycle."
The drone returned before long, clutching a fresh load of scrap—some of it intact, most of it broken but repairable. It had found the engineering station's lower housing and pulled free a sealed crate marked with tool schematics. Kael opened it manually.
Inside: structural welders, hardened wire coils, sealed conduit packs, and—miraculously—two micro-oscillators, intact.
"Now we're talking," he muttered.
"These components can restore between 65 and 80 percent of long-range communication functionality," the AI offered.
"Estimated completion time: four hours. Shall I begin?"
Kael hesitated.
"Do it—but only once we're inside the pocket. If we lose power in the middle of this maneuver, we're dead."
An hour later, the pod slipped into the center of the safe zone pocket. The difference was immediate. The faint tremors stopped. Outside, the debris passed them by with a strange grace—like they'd fallen into the eye of a storm.
Kael exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours.
"All right," he said. "We made it."
"Stability holding. External drift has entered minimal-interference phase. No natural shifts expected unless impacted by large external masses."
Kael stood and stretched his arms. His back cracked, a welcome reminder that he was still alive.
"Begin the repair cycle. Communications first. Then we take a serious look at this pod—every system, every crack. No more patch jobs. We do it right this time."
"Confirmed. Initiating communications rebuild sequence."
Sparks danced behind the wall panels as internal servos and microtools began wiring in the salvaged parts. The lights dimmed slightly, then stabilized. Kael moved toward the auxiliary AI cradle, placing a hand on the sealed panel.
Not yet. But soon.
He turned back to the console and pulled up the full system integrity readout. One by one, the bars began to climb.
The hours stretched on.
Kael worked with methodical precision, the pod's soft hum a constant companion. His hands, wrapped in gloves adapted for zero-g tools, moved smoothly across panels, rewiring circuits, patching broken data lines, and reinforcing the power distribution grid.
Outside, the hauler drone performed another round, skimming close to a collapsed communications buoy tangled in mangled cables. Kael watched its feed closely, nerves taut. Salvage here was risky—a sudden jerk could send it spinning into debris, losing valuable components or worse.
A warning tone chimed softly inside the pod.
"Unscheduled mass shift detected," the AI reported, voice steady.
Kael's heart jolted. He raced to the viewport.
Far off, a massive piece of wreckage—an old cargo container twice the size of the pod—had detached from a cluster and was drifting directly toward the edge of the safe pocket.
"Impact trajectory?"
"Trajectory intersects with pocket boundary in approximately twenty-four minutes. Impact velocity low but sufficient to disrupt the debris field's stability."
He swallowed hard.
"Well, that changes things."
"AI, prioritize completion of communications sequence. Divert maximum power to comms grid. Get me a signal out."
"Affirmative."
Kael gritted his teeth and doubled down, sweat beading beneath his helmet. Every wire, every circuit, every calibration mattered.
The pod's lights flickered under the load but held steady.
Minutes later, a faint beep echoed from the console—a weak but clear signal.
He allowed himself a breath.
"We're alive."