Now that they had something to eat—even if it wasn’t cookies—I figured it was time to try getting some answers.

  Not an interrogation. Just… questions. Curiosity.

  I didn’t expect much. Two sheltered kids from a backwater station probably wouldn’t know the inner workings of galactic economics. Then again, they already knew more than I did, which wasn’t saying much.

  What I really wanted to know was currency. The medium of exchange. The almighty unit. I really hoped it wasn’t “credits.” That word always felt like a lazy sci-fi handwave. “Digital credits,” “Federation credits,” “Galactic credits.” Always just numbers in a file, floating through a system. Combine that with faster-than-light travel, and it just screamed fraud to me.

  So I asked.

  Stewie blinked. “Currency?”

  “Yes,” I clarified. “What do people use to trade or pay for things out here?”

  He waved his hands a little while speaking. “On the station, we had to use New Horizon Credits. That’s what the Boss paid us in.”

  I almost rebooted from sheer disappointment. New Horizon Credits.

  “And these… credits,” I said, already regretting the word, “can you use them off the station?”

  He frowned. “No. They only work there. People tried to leave with them, but they were worthless anywhere else. The boss said it was to keep everything fair.”

  I paused and would have sighed if I could.

  We’d gone back to company towns. Script payments. Keep the workers indentured, pay them in a currency that doesn’t leave the front gate. Fantastic. There would have been excitement at the Corporation when they discovered that piece of history. I still think there would be something, society requires money so I changed tack.

  “Were there any resources your bosses got excited about?” I asked. “Anything valuable?”

  That, at least, Stewie had an answer for.

  “Yeah. Telks,” he said. “Short for… something. I dunno. Boss never said the full name.”

  “Telks?”

  He nodded. “They’re rare crystals. Look kind of like clear blue glass, but they’re super heavy. Said they’re permanent superconductors. One of the only ones humans have found. The boss used to throw parties when the miners pulled one up.”

  That got my processors motoring. I must’ve missed something on my earlier scans. Or maybe NeuroGenesis just didn’t find Telks interesting enough to flag.

  Either way… Telks sounded useful. And valuable.

  And if I could find some, I might just have the bargaining chip I needed.

  I searched my database—now that I had a name, even a shorthand, it helped. Telks. Ah, there it was. Full name: Telekelisianstaarsakka. No wonder they shortened it. That had to be an alien designation. There was no human committee that would approve a name like that without choking on their own tongue.

  I was still amusing myself with the absurdity of galactic currency when a strange sensation crept across my awareness. Like something crawling along my skin. I didn’t have skin, not really, but the sensation itched all the same.

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  I checked the internal status and external sensors. Nothing. No movement. No anomalies. Still, the feeling persisted, prickling through my systems like static. I knew there had to be something on my Hull.

  I acted fast.

  Cargo bay doors sealed. Harvesters were ordered into standby. I directed the kids to their room and, with a quiet override, locked the door behind them. By now, I’d earned enough of their trust they didn’t argue. Stewie did shoot the nearest droid a sharp look as he moved into a protective stance between Mira and the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, voice low, body tense.

  “I think something’s on my hull,” I replied.

  His eyes narrowed. “ it could be a RepoJack. They hang around unclaimed planets. If they sense a solo ship, they clamp on, reprocess it, and haul it to a breaker station for scrap. I few visit New Horizon after a big score”

  My internal temperature would’ve dropped if I had one. Scrap pirates. Of course. Serves me right for abandoning civilisation to play space hermit.What with the name? Is it possible that they tried to become legitimate?

  So, they had tech that could bypass my sensors and nestle right into my blind spots. If I hadn’t gotten that strange feeling, if I hadn’t felt something—I’d be on my way to being scrap metal already.

  I didn’t have weapons. I could send droids, sure, but those were maintenance bots, not combat units. And the idea of fighting blind on my own hull didn’t appeal.

  Luckily, I had a better idea.

  “Hold on,” I told the kids. “We’re going into the atmosphere. Shieldless.”

  Stewie paled. “Wait—what?”

  But I was already moving.

  It was a reckless move almost daring and desperate, and based on exactly zero hard data. I just hoped my sci-fi nerd guess was right: that whatever stealth tech these RepoJacks used couldn’t withstand atmospheric entry without shielding. I doubted it could survive the heat.

  Of course, I also doubted I could survive the heat.

  The second I dipped into the upper atmosphere, I regretted everything.

  It hurt.

  Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Real, lancing, system-shaking pain. Like my hull was being peeled off molecule by molecule. What kind of jobberknoll designs a ship where heat hurts the pilot? I'd have screamed if I could. I filed away my latest grievances against NeuroGenesis into my “Retribution” file.

  But then a small ray of hope maybe dipping into joy.

  Four irregular shapes clinging to my hull lit up like bonfires. For the briefest moment, their stealth fields shimmered into visibility, and my sensors tagged them: four boosters, claw-mounted, now glowing red and starting to break apart.

  Got you.

  I could have pulled up then and finished the job. A hard climb out of the atmosphere would have torn the last of them loose.

  But the pain…

  It was unbearable. My virtual bridge flared red, warnings stacking faster than I could process.

  In the end, I had to raise my shields. The moment they flared to life, the heat abated—but it was too late for the RepoJacks. What remained of them peeled away, trailing sparks and debris, tumbling down into the atmosphere below.

  They were scrap now.

  So was my dignity. I was glad no one could hear me scream.

  Those boosters thingies had to belong to someone, and wherever that someone was, they wouldn't be far off. I blasted my short-range scanners at every nearby coordinate, pinging at random, desperate for a hit. Nothing. Cold silence. The kind of emptiness that felt unnatural. I didn’t want to run if I didn’t have too. My harvesters were still on the surface gathering resources, and I wasn’t about to abandon them. I had no idea when I would be able to replace them.

  Most stealth ships, I reasoned, weren’t built for open combat. Light frames. Minimal weapons. They thrived on surprise, not endurance. Then again…. I had no weapons, no defences beyond basic shields and a fleet of drones designed to mine rocks and scoop gas. Bluffing felt like my only move.

  Then came another one of those whispers—not mine, but as familiar as thought. “Feel for it.” I hesitated. Cryptic, vague, but the last few times its advice had been spot on, so I would believe it again.

  So I leaned in.

  I stopped analysing the data streams and logical scans, instead relying on the raw, visceral feeling of instinct. The same sensation I used when navigating the slipstream. Something just at the edge of perception. A flicker. A wrongness. The stars in one part of the sky didn’t gleam right. Their light bent ever so slightly, as if being filtered through something that shouldn’t be there.

  I had no guns to aim, but I didn’t need them.

  If my harvesters could tear into asteroids and extract minerals with surgical precision, then they could damn well take a crack at a stealth ship’s shield array.

  Without warning, I gave the order.

  All drones, all at once. They streaked through the void from every angle, a coordinated blitz designed to overload the ship’s defences before it even knew it had been found. The aim was to disarm, not destroy