"The void does not warn you before it kills you. It simply waits for the moment you stop paying attention."

  Unknown Gavis Station Dockworker, recovered personal log, 3075

  Chapter 12

  I held position at three kilometers and watched the station breathe.

  That was the only word for it. Theta-Seven's automated systems cycled through their standard operational patterns, lights blinking at regular intervals, atmospheric processors venting recycled gases in rhythmic pulses. From a distance, the monitoring station looked functional. Looked normal. The docking bay standing open with its magnetic clamps extended told a different story, though. No legitimate station left itself open like that, an unblinking eye inviting anything from the void inside without question. Either the crew had deliberately disabled standard protocols, or someone had done it for them.

  I kept the courier stationary and ran a passive sensor sweep, letting the ship's detection systems reach out without broadcasting my presence. The data resolved slowly, layer by layer, each reading confirming what my instincts had already concluded. The station's external defensive grid was completely offline. Not in standby mode, not in reduced operation, but offline in the way systems went offline when someone had physically removed the power routing. The perimeter warning beacons that should have pinged my approach were dark. The standard challenge-response transmitters that every monitoring outpost broadcast continuously had fallen silent at some point in the last twelve hours.

  Someone had gutted the station's security systems.

  My fingers moved across the passive scanner controls, refining the sweep. Seven life signs registered aboard Theta-Seven, distributed across three decks. The biological readings were faint, suggesting either heavy shielding around those areas or occupants who were deliberately minimising their energy output. Two signatures clustered near the station's command centre on the upper deck. Three more gathered in what the station schematic identified as the data processing level, the exact location where Vorn's intelligence suggested the sensor logs were stored. The remaining two registered near the docking bay itself, positioned at angles that looked less like workers going about their duties and more like sentinels covering an entrance point.

  I pulled up the station's standard crew manifest from Vorn's intelligence files. Theta-Seven ran on a skeleton staff of four at any given time, two technicians and two analysts rotated on six-week cycles. Seven life signs meant three additional bodies had arrived without official record, and whoever they were, they had arranged themselves in a formation that had nothing to do with routine monitoring operations.

  The question was whether the original four crew members were among those seven signatures, or whether they had been replaced entirely.

  I reduced power to my engines, running on minimum thrust to avoid broadcasting a heat signature. The courier's Vesperi medical registration gave me a degree of passive protection. Ships coded for medical transit received automatic deference from most automated systems, a holdover from diplomatic agreements that predated the current conflicts. The humans or whatever occupied Theta-Seven weren't automated systems, though, and the two signatures near the docking bay were too precisely positioned for coincidence.

  I needed that data drive. Vorn's intelligence had been specific: Theta-Seven's monitoring arrays had captured detailed sensor logs of the experimental anchor activations, the two test events I had identified in the psychic event map. The station's position between Arkai and Strurteran territories gave it a unique observational angle, and its specialised Warp-Echo detection equipment was sensitive enough to record the exact energy signatures involved. If those logs contained the activation patterns I suspected, they would identify the technology involved, which meant identifying who had built it and where they had done so.

  The two sentinels near the docking bay were my immediate problem.

  I spent several minutes considering my options, cross-referencing the station schematic against the life sign positions. Theta-Seven was not a large structure. The main access corridor ran from the docking bay straight through to the central lift, with branch corridors leading to crew quarters and secondary systems. The data processing level sat one deck below command, accessible by the central lift or a maintenance ladder system that ran along the station's outer hull.

  The maintenance access points were not inside the docking bay.

  I found the exterior maintenance hatch on the schematic, a small airlock designed for hull repairs and equipment servicing. It sat on the station's port-facing surface, away from the open docking bay and the two life signs watching it. The hatch would require manual override rather than automated clearance, which meant no electronic signature that could alert anyone monitoring the station's internal systems.

  Getting there meant a spacewalk.

  The courier carried standard emergency equipment, including a vacuum suit rated for extended external operations. I had not worn one since my military exchange posting, three years of fugitive survival left little opportunity to practice zero-gravity manoeuvres, but the training was still there, filed in muscle memory alongside Verrus's ritual patterns and Arkai military protocol.

  I suited up methodically, moving through the pre-walk checklist with deliberate care. Seal integrity on every joint. Oxygen supply confirmed. Magnetic boot calibration tested against the courier's hull. Communications locked to tight-beam only, no broad transmission that could be detected from Theta-Seven. The process took eleven minutes, and I used every one of them to map my approach route in detail, visualising the distance between the courier and the maintenance hatch, calculating the time I would spend exposed against the station's hull.

  I pressurized the airlock and stepped outside.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The void received me with its familiar indifference. Stars in every direction, the planetoid's dark bulk looming below Theta-Seven's anchoring structure, the station itself a geometric shape against the background field. The silence was absolute, broken only by the sound of my own breathing inside the helmet. I activated the magnetic boots and walked along the courier's hull until I reached a position with clear line of sight to the maintenance hatch, then detached and used the suit's manoeuvring jets in short, careful bursts that would register as background noise against the sensor chaos of contested space.

  The crossing took four minutes. Four minutes of open exposure with nothing between me and anyone watching from Theta-Seven's viewports. I kept my trajectory flat against the station's hull profile, approaching from below the sight lines of the upper observation deck. The suit's dark composite material absorbed most light frequencies. I was not invisible, but I was small and slow and moving against a background of uniform black, not the kind of target that drew the eye unless you were specifically looking.

  I reached the maintenance hatch without incident.

  The manual override panel sat recessed into the hull, protected by a simple mechanical lock rather than electronic authentication. Standard design for emergency access. I worked the mechanism with gloved fingers, feeling the resistance of a lock that had not been operated recently, then applying steady pressure until the tumblers aligned. The hatch released with a vibration I felt through my palms but could not hear. The airlock beyond was small, barely large enough for two people in standard suits, and I cycled through it on manual operation, watching the pressure gauge climb as atmosphere flooded in.

  The inner hatch opened into a maintenance corridor running along the station's outer ring. Narrow, lit by emergency strips rather than full illumination, smelling of recycled air and the particular metallic tang of equipment that had been running continuously for months. I removed my helmet and clipped it to my suit, listening to the station's sounds. The ventilation system's steady hum. The distant vibration of the reactor. Nothing human. Nothing moving.

  I moved toward the central corridor, keeping my steps light on the deck plating. The schematic had shown the data processing level branching left from the main corridor junction, with the entrance marked by a security door that would normally require staff authentication. Normally.

  The security door stood open. Not malfunctioning open, not forced open, but deliberately left open, held in place by a length of conduit wedged into the frame. Someone wanted easy access between the data processing level and wherever they were working. The casualness of it set my teeth on edge. Whoever was here felt comfortable enough to leave doors propped open, which meant they were either confident they were alone, or confident enough in their position that unexpected visitors did not concern them.

  Three life signs were somewhere ahead of me on this deck.

  I stopped at the junction and listened for a full thirty seconds before proceeding. Faint sounds filtered through from the data processing room: the regular rhythm of active equipment, the occasional click of input systems being operated, and voices, low enough that I could not make out individual words but clearly present. At least two people speaking, the cadence suggesting a working conversation rather than casual talk.

  I approached the doorway from the side, using the wall for cover, and looked through the gap at the hinged edge.

  The data processing room was a long rectangular space dominated by monitoring arrays along both walls, screens displaying the Warp-Echo sensor readings that were Theta-Seven's primary function. Two of the three life signs were visible: figures in dark, unmarked clothing seated at opposite workstations, both focused on the displays in front of them. A third figure stood near the room's far end, hands moving across a data extraction unit, working with the practised speed of someone who knew exactly what they were looking for.

  The extraction unit was already connected to the station's primary data core. The cable running between them was thick, high-capacity, the kind used for bulk transfer rather than selective copying. Whoever these people were, they were not browsing the logs. They were taking everything.

  The third figure turned slightly, and I caught a partial profile. Human. Male. The clothing was deliberately nondescript, but the way he held himself carried the specific, cultivated stillness of someone trained to operate in hostile environments without broadcasting intent. Not Arkai military posture, too fluid for that rigid structure. Not Strurteran either. Something about the economy of movement reminded me of the Lumeri agents I had observed during my captivity, though the build was wrong for that species.

  I needed to reach the data extraction unit before the transfer completed.

  More precisely, I needed the completed drive once the transfer finished, because interrupting the process mid-transfer would corrupt the data and leave me with nothing. I could watch and wait, then take the drive when the transfer completed, except that required eliminating or bypassing three people in an enclosed space while the two sentinels near the docking bay remained available to respond to any disturbance.

  I pulled back from the doorway and worked through the problem systematically. The two figures at the workstations were monitoring the sensor arrays, probably watching for any approach from the direction they had left exposed. The third was managing the data extraction. None of them were watching the maintenance corridor I had entered through, because as far as they knew, that entrance was sealed and the station's security grid was offline.

  They had made an assumption about the completeness of their preparation.

  I retreated back along the maintenance corridor to a secondary access point I had noted in the schematic, a service crawlspace running above the data processing room that connected to the equipment housings for the sensor arrays. The crawlspace hatch was secured with another mechanical lock, and I worked it open with the same careful pressure as before.

  The space above the ceiling was cramped and cluttered with cabling and equipment mounts, but traversable by someone willing to move slowly on hands and knees. I eased myself in and started toward the data processing room, following the schematic in my memory. Below me, through the thin ceiling panels, I could hear the voices more clearly now.

  "Transfer at sixty-two percent." The speaker had an accent I could not immediately place, a flattened vowel pattern that suggested someone who had learned Strurteran Common as a second language. "Estimated completion in eleven minutes."

  A second voice responded, clipped and precise. "The window holds for another twenty. Move it along if you can."

  "I am moving it along. The core is partitioned, it requires sequential extraction rather than parallel. I explained this already."

  The third figure did not contribute to the exchange. The careful silence suggested either focused concentration or seniority, the kind of quiet that came from someone who did not feel the need to narrate their work.

  Eleven minutes until completion. I positioned myself above the equipment housing at the room's far end, as close to the data extraction unit as the crawlspace allowed, and settled in to wait and calculate. Taking the drive directly after completion meant confronting three people simultaneously. The two sentinels near the docking bay added complication if any of the three managed to raise an alarm before I could secure the transfer unit and exit through the maintenance hatch.

  The Warp-Echo pulsed faintly at the edge of my awareness.

  I had been suppressing the resonance since Gavis Station, forcing it back behind structured Applied Sorcery discipline every time the connection threatened to surface. Here, in the cramped darkness above strangers who were stealing information about the thing that had killed twelve thousand people, the pressure built differently. Not threatening to overwhelm, more like a tide moving against a dam, patient and accumulating.

  The psychic scar from Marekthos throbbed once.

  The transfer unit beeped below me. "Eighty percent."