The constant and oppressive hum of the ion engines vibrates within the metallic walls, merging with the rhythmic hammering of an industrial forge echoing from the ship's bowels. In the background, like an echo trapped in time, the cry of a baby can be heard, distant and distorted.
In the vastness of the void, there is no mercy for the weak. Space is not silence; it is a constant roar of engines belonging to those who hunt to survive. In this universe, if you are not the predator, you are just scrap waiting to be recycled.
Eight years ago, in the Orion Void, the civilian ship Dawn was nothing more than a gutted husk; a dream of metal searching for a new home that ended up as a floating coffin. The Star Hunter fleet had surrounded it like wolves circling wounded prey. Drak "Anvil" Rorn, an elite warrior at the time, walked through the smoking debris with the heaviness of a man who had seen too much death.
Drak noticed a dented escape pod trapped under a support beam. Inside, a small bundle moved: a baby only months old with large, curious eyes that defied the darkness. The warrior felt a pang of remorse, an unexpected glitch in his pirate instincts.
—Drak! Stop wasting time! —Varkas’s voice snapped through the comms, laced with venom. —Captain Korv "Black Eye" Slade demands the power core now. If you get distracted by trash, I’ll demote you myself right here.
Drak did not respond. With a roar from his hydraulic implants that made the floor groan, he lifted the beam in a single surge of power.
—Damn it... —Drak growled, looking at the little one. —You... you’re coming with me, little demon. I’ll call you Toren. Because you’re going to have to be as tough as ore to survive what’s coming.
Eight years later, on the ship Bloody Star, the present was much more bitter. The electric crack of an energy whip striking metal preceded a gasp of suppressed pain. Drak was no longer the elite; his insistence on protecting that "useless cargo" had dragged him down to the tenth rank in the hierarchy. And Toren Leks, nicknamed "Iron," paid the price as a maintenance Thralls in the ship's depths.
—Faster, scrap rat! —roared Gruk "Beast" Thorne, kicking the conduit where Toren was huddled. —Varkas wants this engine ready for the assault! If Drak can’t control you, I’ll throw you both overboard!
Toren, barely eight years old, held a plasma welder with hands black from oil. The heat inside the tube was suffocating, but his pulse did not falter.
—Three seconds, Beast —Toren replied in a flat, cold voice that did not belong to a child his age. —If you stop hitting the panel, I can align the magnets. If you keep vibrating the hull, the plasma will melt us both. You choose.
Gruk went silent for a second, his face flushed with fury. He knew Toren was the only one small and brilliant enough not to die in the attempt, so he held his tongue, chewing on his hatred.
The hiss of steam escaping from a damaged pipe accompanied Toren as he finally crawled out of the conduit, staggering from exhaustion. His bare feet hit the cold metal, leaving soot footprints on the deck. Drak appeared from the workshop shadows, a mass of muscle and scars that stepped between the boy and Gruk’s whip.
—Beat it, Beast. The boy is mine —Drak stated in a voice that sounded like stones grinding at the bottom of a well.
Gruk spat on the floor but retreated, cursing under his breath before the veteran’s imposing figure. Drak turned to Toren. The man was a giant in a leather apron hardened by decades of sparks. His most unsettling feature, an ocular implant on his left side, glowed a deep crimson as it scanned the damage to the boy's gear.
—Look at you, Iron. You look more like scrap than a kid —Drak grunted, tossing him a dirty rag and a piece of bread as hard as a rock.
Toren caught the bread with hands that would not stop trembling. At eight years old, the boy no longer had the roundness of childhood; he was a bundle of tendons and prominent bones under a tattered gray shirt. His eyes, sunken and framed by dark circles, watched the workshop with a frigid intelligence, analyzing every valve and cable as if they were part of his own body.
Drak sat heavily on a stripped engine, making the metal creak under his weight.
—Listen closely —Drak said, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper loaded with a guilt Toren did not yet understand. —Varkas has given me an ultimatum. My rank as tenth officer is the only thing standing between us and a slow death in the frontier asteroid mines. If I don't get Korv’s engines running at a performance the rest of the fleet can't ignore, they’ll discard us like defective parts.
Toren squeezed the stale bread between his grease-stained fingers.
—The mines? —the boy asked, his voice barely a dry thread.
—Dust and darkness, Iron. No one survives a year there.
Drak placed a heavy hand on Toren’s shoulder, a pressure that was both a threat and a refuge.
—I need your wit. I need you to work magic with this junk. If I don't rise in the hierarchy, you won't have a tomorrow.
Toren did not respond immediately. He retreated to his corner, a nest of cables and spare parts where he felt safest. As he chewed the stale bread, his fingers stroked a control panel hidden under a tarp. A sharp digital beep vibrated in the air, followed by the flicker of a blue light before his eyes.
It was the Nova System, the "Ghost" core that only he knew about. Fragmented messages appeared on the interface: Synchronization at five percent. "Dawn" file corrupted. A synthetic voice processed the data: "Toren... fragmented logs detected. The civilian ship did not fall by accident. Shadows detected in Central Command... Warning: Do not trust the red lights."
Toren stopped with the bread half-chewed. Drak always told him his parents abandoned him, but Nova’s fragments spoke of a calculated downfall. A chill ran down his spine as he looked at Drak’s armor in the distance.
The music of tension began to rise in his mind as he looked toward the bridge, where Korv and Varkas ruled. His small hands clenched into grease-covered fists.
—Drak wants to take back his spot using my brains —Toren whispered, his eyes turning as icy and calculating as the vacuum outside. —I’ll give it to him. I’ll make him so indispensable that no one can touch us. And while we climb, Nova... we’ll find the rest of the truth.
Toren has begun his game. He doesn't know who killed his parents, but he knows the truth is hidden under layers of steel and blood. The Engineer has begun his design... and the first piece is Drak.