Chapter 13: The Trap Springs

Static hissed through the Morningstar's comm array like sand thrown against glass. Sera's hand was already moving before the sound resolved into signal — fingers leaving the nav console where she'd been plotting fuel stops, reaching for the communications panel with the automatic reflex of a pilot who'd spent too many hours alone in a cockpit. The ship hummed around her, the familiar low-frequency vibration of engines at cruise, and the sound cut through it like a blade. The distress signal hit full clarity. Weapons fire. The staccato percussion of kinetic rounds against hull plating, layered under the shriek of energy weapons cycling. A station's structural integrity alarm — three tones, the sequence that meant load-bearing sections were failing. System warnings in the background, each one a domino: atmospheric containment, power grid, shield generators dropping offline in sequence. And beneath all of it, the hiss of emergency comms, someone shouting coordinates that matched— Echo's outpost. Prime's last known location. Prime. The name moved her body before her mind finished processing the signal's content. Sera's hands hit the navigation controls and the Morningstar banked hard, the salvage hauler groaning as its mass shifted against the new heading. Course plotted. Coordinates locked. The engines surged as she pushed the throttle forward, past the comfortable cruise setting, past the fuel-efficient transit markers, into the red zone where the hauler's drives consumed reserves like water through a cracked hull. Heat flared across her left shoulder. Crimson, the fire dragon's tattoo burning against her skin — not strategic, not measured. Raw. The dragon equivalent of hearing someone you love scream. Faster. Go faster. "I know," Sera said aloud, to the empty cockpit, to the dragon under her skin. Her voice sounded strange in the silence — rough-edged, too loud. Without Pip perched on the console,…