The retrofitting of the lander turned into a full-blown bonding experience, it was loud, chaotic, productive. Slightly flammable.

  Kel and Stewie clashed more than once, usually mid-argument while both were half-buried in an access panel and refusing to back down on cable routing philosophy. Most of it came down to the stealth system; the salvaged hardware wasn’t exactly plug-and-play, and Kel’s “just wire it and test” approach clashed with Stewie’s “triple-check every connector and then glare at it until it obeys” methodology.

  Still, they made progress. No electrocutions. Only one minor hull fire. I counted that as a win.

  Stewie didn’t trust himself enough to install the warp engine, at least not yet but he made the stealth system his personal crusade. Every bolt, bracket, and cable was checked, double-checked, and calibrated so precisely that I was starting to wonder if he planned to marry the thing. He also ran multiple diagnostic passes on the scanner suite and personally verified that the shield ratings matched the original spec sheets because he wasn’t sure if the advertisement could be trusted, it was a sensible decision.

  Meanwhile, Lynn and Mira were tackling the interior. With Laia's guidance and her relentless enforcement of “non-critical systems only” policy. They were allowed to use the ship’s nanite factory with restriction. No structural supports, no bulkhead reinforcements, and absolutely no engine parts. Laia was very firm about that last one. But bathrooms? Seating? A compact galley unit? Apparently, those passed the “not deadly if it fails” threshold. Laia's attitude suggested she had some trauma from an anti-nanite weapon.

  Mira took special pride in selecting a soft teal tone for the lighting and sourcing seats “that don’t feel like punishment.” Her words. Not mine. Lynn, being Lynn, focused on the things that mattered—efficient layout, cargo compartments, modular storage. If it could be locked down mid-battle and survive atmospheric reentry, she approved it.

  Everyone was working.

  And me?

  I was tearing myself a new arsehole. Quietly. Elegantly. With the kind of existential dread that didn’t even raise a diagnostic warning anymore.

  Of course, the Cartography Agency mission had been a trap. Why wouldn’t it be? A nicely packaged “routine task” from a government branch with suspiciously clean records, all while I was trying to lay low? Obvious bait. The kind you hang from a string and hope the idiot doesn’t notice. And now, thanks to that mission, they knew exactly where I’d been and were likely to narrow down where I was going.

  Maybe they’d had other ways of tracking me. Maybe the whole freelancer thing had just been convenient cover to let the trap breathe. Accepting a government job? Registering in a central database? I might as well have uploaded my location with a waving emoji and a note that said “Hi Mom.”

  They’d always wanted me back. Well not me, I was replaceable trash. It was Laia they were really after.

  Now they had breadcrumbs. Therefore we had to change the game.

  And our path forward?

  It led straight out of Human-controlled space.

  The only region that might offer a sliver of protection was the Alliance. In Laia's words, they were a loosely coordinated mess of alien species who tolerated each other for the sake of trade and not much else. A charming diplomatic tangle held together with treaties, bureaucracy, and an unhealthy number of committee meetings.

  But even then, I couldn’t guarantee safety. If the bounty was high enough, the Alliance might not hand us over immediately but they’d definitely think about it.

  Before we risked that, we had to disappear. Properly.

  Black markets. Spoofed IDs. Registry scramblers. Hardware cloaks. The sort of things you never admit to buying. I had hoped they existed.

  We needed a new face—digitally, and maybe even physically.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It took a few days, but the lander was finally functional. Rough around the edges, sure—but solid. The shields held, the stealth array purred like a smug cat, and the seats didn’t feel like medieval torture devices. A miracle, really.

  Now it was time to move.

  The ruins had been sitting on our nav chart like an unanswered question. I had no idea what we’d find there—old data, broken architecture, ancient disappointment—but it was a lead. And right now, we needed leads more than guarantees.

  The jump was uneventful, which I’d learned to appreciate. No anomalies, no mid-transit surprises, just the clean slip of space folding open and spitting us out on the other side.

  The system was strange, in a beautiful sort of way.

  Single planet. No moons. No orbiting rocks. Just one red dwarf sun, one world—locked together like dancers in a permanent step. The planet was tidally bound, meaning one side always faced the star, bathed in endless daylight, while the other was swallowed in constant night.

  It made for a sharp contrast. From orbit, the day side shimmered gold and white, reflective and harsh. The night side was a void, no surface detail, no hint of colour—just shadow.

  I found myself wondering if it had always been this way—even when the native species lived here. If entire civilizations had risen and fallen with one half of the world scorched in endless sunlight and the other frozen in darkness. That kind of evolutionary pressure tends to produce something remarkable.

  Or terrifying.

  Even back when I was a kid, scientists had speculated that tidally locked planets might still be habitable. The most likely place for life would be along the terminator it was the narrow strip between night and day, where heat and cold balanced just enough to keep water liquid and life possible. Especially on desert planets like this one, the models always pointed to that fragile middle ground.

  And this world? It was almost textbook perfect.

  If the professor had studied here, there had to be something left. Structures. Foundations. Signs that someone once called this place home. I hoped there was still something left behind to find.

  I focused my short-range scanners on the terminator zone, combing for anomalies, hidden heat signatures, subtle shifts in terrain. Hoping that maybe, just maybe, someone else had missed something I wouldn’t.

  That’s when Laia chimed in.

  “Don’t search like a ship,” she said. “Search like a person.”

  She had a point. The real advantage of my current situation—this strange, halfway existence—wasn’t raw processing power. It was instinct. Pattern recognition. The kind of intuition a machine couldn’t replicate. I would have liked to see Laia pick out all the traffic lights in a picture. Surely that would stump her, I jest.

  So I stopped scanning and started looking.

  As we drifted in low orbit, I stared at the boundary between light and dark. Watched the way shadows fell, the way heat bled across the surface in irregular lines. And there—barely visible—were the inconsistencies. Small patterns, too regular to be natural. Angles where there should’ve been erosion. Heat where there should’ve been none.

  They gnawed at my mind.

  And just like that, we had a target.

  I still didn’t know what we’d find. But whatever it was… it had been waiting to be discovered.

  It was time for the ship’s first real away mission but surprisingly, it was Kel who put his foot down.

  He flat-out refused to let Stewie or Mira go.

  “It’s too dangerous,” he said, arms crossed, jaw set in that immovable way that meant there was no use arguing. Stewie, of course, argued anyway.

  “I’m not a kid,” he snapped. “And I know the lander better than anyone. I helped build it.”

  Which, to be fair, was technically true. The stealth rig alone probably wouldn’t even function without his obsessive calibration. But Kel wasn’t budging. He wasn’t loud about it, he was just stubborn. Quietly immovable, like bedrock.

  Even Lynn looked surprised. “You sure about this?” she asked him.

  Kel nodded once. “They stay.”

  That was enough to make me pause. Kel wasn’t usually the cautious one. If anything, he leaned toward reckless pragmatism. So for him to draw a line like this... I couldn’t help wondering if he was picking up on something the rest of us weren’t. Subconscious instinct. Gut feeling. Call it whatever you like but his reaction was enough to make me take it seriously.

  That’s when Laia stepped in.

  “I’ll go,” she said, appearing mid-air above the console, her expression calm. “If Kel’s worried, we treat it like a threat until proven otherwise.”

  Stewie opened his mouth, but she cut him off gently. “Let me check it out first. I can deploy a clone, not fully aware, but linked. It’ll scout the ruins, relay telemetry, and report back on anything unusual.”

  Kel agreed with the plan, and I watched his shoulders ease if only a little. A quiet tell, but enough to realise he’d been more tense than even he realised. Whatever instinct had been gnawing at him, Laia’s offer had helped settle it.

  I couldn’t help wondering what kind of danger he thought we might find down there.

  Either way, it made me reflect on something I’d noticed more and more lately.

  Humans.

  Adaptable. Stubborn. Surprisingly fragile and yet somehow impossible to break. Kel, Lynn, Stewie, and Mira kept evolving to meet the next challenge, the next twist in the road. They didn’t have my sensors or processing power, but they had something else.

  Instinct. Initiative. The ability to hold fear in one hand and keep moving with the other.

  I had to admire it.

  In a galaxy full of uncertainty, that kind of versatility might be the only real advantage that mattered.