The scavenger ship groaned as it realigned, pulled forward by Nova's will. He didn't sit at the helm. He didn't need to.
Every wire, every interface, every aether-fed circuit on the vessel bent to his command like limbs of his own body.
Ahead, the mothership drifted—half-buried in shadow, half-lit by the pale light of a distant star. Even from here, its condition was undeniable.
It looked like a corpse.
Nova's jaw tightened.
The looters' ship docked with a stuttering jolt. Airlocks struggled to seal, groaning under misaligned systems.
He stepped through them without pause, his bare feet echoing against the cold steel. The docking tunnel was barely pressurized. Sharp wind lashed his skin like knives.
But Nova didn't bleed.
His body, built for war and worse, regulated itself with ease. Muscles adapted. Skin resisted. Aether pulsed through him in steady, patient rhythm. The pressure that would have crushed another man's lungs only made him breathe deeper.
The hatch opened, and he stepped into silence.
The mothership's interior was worse than he remembered.
Panels torn out. Cables snapped and left dangling. Hull layers exposed like bone beneath wounded flesh. The walls bore scars where systems had been violently stripped, not failed over time but torn away by greedy hands.
He moved with purpose, weaving through the once-pristine halls, now forgotten and rotting. This had been the heart of a fleet. The command vessel of Project NOVA.
Now it barely remembered its own name.
He reached the central chamber. The core room.
There, at last, he stopped.
The aether absorption unit—once a marvel of integrated symbiosis—was gone. Not simply broken or corroded. Removed. Deliberately.
The connectors had been cut clean. Stabilizers torn. The central housing was cracked and left hollow.
"No accident."
Nova murmured.
He reached out. Let his hand hover where the core once pulsed. His body could still feel the residue—faint, ancient. Aether scars.
That unit hadn't just powered the ship. It had powered him. His link to it had been deep, written into his very nerves.
Now it was gone.
He scanned the surrounding systems. Engines were cold, functional in name only. Support systems were locked into low-power hibernation, barely holding structure. The ship could still move—but not far. One or two jumps, maximum. Anything more would risk collapse.
He closed his eyes.
He could keep the ship alive. But not with his own body alone. Aether flowed freely within him, yes—but channeling it into a machine not designed to absorb it directly would destroy both him and the vessel. It needed a core.
Fortunately, he had one.
The scavenger ship's absorption unit—low-grade, industrial, barely enough to power the basic systems—wouldn't hold long. But it would work.
For a while.
Nova turned on his heel and walked back toward the docked ship.
Within minutes, he had reached the engineering bay. The looters' core hummed softly, bolted into a central block.
He placed his hand against it and pulsed his own aether into the stabilizer. The system buckled, then unlocked. Nova tore the unit from its mount and carried it across the tunnel as alarms flickered to life.
Not that anyone was left alive to care.
He re-entered the mothership and moved to the core chamber. There, he connected the stolen unit manually.
Wires sparked. Screws groaned. The whole system rejected it at first—wrong size, wrong rhythm, wrong soul.
Nova slammed his palm against the base and forced it to sync.
Aether flared. The lights stuttered, then steadied.
The mothership exhaled—barely—but it was something.
He stood, watching the gauges. Power flow minimal. Recharge speed pathetic. But for now, it would move. It would live.
Enough to get them to a system where parts still existed. Black markets. Dead zones. Anywhere that still remembered old tech.
He had no illusions. The core would burn out in days. Maybe less if he pushed it.
But days were enough.
He walked to the airlock once more. The passage was open now, exposing him to hard vacuum as he stepped into space. The void clutched at him immediately, dragging across his skin like static-laced ice.
His veins glowed softly as he adjusted to it. He didn't falter.
The navigation panel crackled to life, dim lights flickering across fractured glass.
Cold blue lines crawled across the interface, slow but deliberate, as the ship's long-dormant systems reawakened.
A soft voice echoed through the chamber, unmistakable.
[Welcome back, Nova.]
He paused.
"…Nyx."
[Affirmative. Systems are operating at four percent capacity. Navigation online. Internal sensors partially restored.]
The AI's tone carried the same eerie calm as always—polite, toneless, yet edged with something almost human.
Nova stepped closer to the console. The faint pulse of aether in the stolen core buzzed beneath his fingertips.
"Where's your main body?"
He asked.
[Offline. Primary housing is located in Sector Twelve—Core Nexus. Physical systems non-responsive. AI functions operating from secondary fragments.]
Nova narrowed his eyes.
"Activate your main body."
A pause. Not hesitation. Calculation.
[Unable to comply.]
"Why?"
[Mainframe is inoperable. Power conduit was severed during external breach. Core processors have fallen into lockdown mode. I cannot override that state from here.]
Nova's jaw clenched.
"Then I'll do it manually."
Another pause.
[Manual reactivation is not recommended. Due to security corruption, I have become a threat to the ship's internal systems. Defensive protocols are live. Anything approaching my body will be marked as hostile.]
"Which includes me."
He muttered.
[Yes. Including you.]
He exhaled through his nose, jaw tight.
That explained it.
Nyx's core should've been the first thing any serious looter ripped out. AI modules of her tier could buy an entire fleet. But no one had touched her. No one had even tried.
Too dangerous.
Too many traps.
Too little return.
Only Nova could survive this long in a ship trying to kill him.
"I understand. But I'll get to you."
He said.
[Noted.]
"In the meantime, while I'm working on that…"
He placed a palm on the panel again, feeding aether into the cracked interface.
"Scan the entire ship. I want a complete assessment. Damage logs. Part requirements. Everything."
[Understood.]
"Make it thorough. I want to know what it'll take to get her moving again—and what it'll cost."
[Commencing diagnostic. This will take approximately six minutes. Internal resistance is slowing scan protocols.]
"That's fine."
Nova stepped back, letting the panel flicker and churn.
His reflection stared back at him in the fractured screen—bare skin still streaked with dried blood, veins glowing faintly beneath the surface. His body was alive. His mind sharper than ever.
But the ship around him?
The ship was dying.
Unless he did something about it.
And the first step was waking up the only intelligence left that still remembered who he was.
Nyx.
The AI who once called him commander.
And who, somewhere deep in the metal bones of the ship, had been left to rot just like him.
Nova moved through the corridors without hesitation, each step echoing through the hollow remains of the mothership.
The deeper he descended toward the Core Nexus, the worse the damage became.
Scorch marks blackened the walls. Panels were ripped open, wires torn and left sparking.
Bullet casings littered the floor alongside dried bloodstains that hadn't faded with time. Blades had been used here too—scavengers trying to cut their way in, maybe force open what they didn't understand.
He paused near a sealed bulkhead, its outer layer warped from plasma fire. Someone had tried to breach it. Hard. Probably a dozen someones.
But the door held.
Nova ran a hand along the dented frame. The security systems must've activated before they got far. He could imagine the scene—flashing lights, automated turrets, screaming.
They'd tried.
They'd died.
And none had made it past this point.
He kept walking.
The deeper he went, the colder it got. The kind of cold that didn't come from vacuum or power failure, but from a place being forgotten long enough to start hating the world that left it behind.
He didn't flinch.
Nyx was waiting.