“Could be a software handshake issue,” Dex offered, though his tone lacked conviction. He was already pulling up diagnostic logs on his own tablet. “Maybe the node just… reset.”
“No,” Mira said. “That’s a data pulse. Someone’s trying to upload information, not call for help.”
Mira slammed into the airlock and cycled through with shaking hands. The inner hatch opened, and she floated into the cabin, tearing off her helmet. Dex was at the controls, his face gray. carrier p5-7 fail
Mira looked at the pod outside the viewport—at the woman’s frozen face, the cracked visor, the blinking light. And she understood.
“Thermal signature. About two thousand klicks spinward of P5-7’s last known position. Small. Cold, but not ambient cold. Like something that’s been running and just shut down.” “Could be a software handshake issue,” Dex offered,
“Already did. No match. And… Mira, it’s moving.”
Just silence.
Mira felt a prickle at the base of her skull—the kind of instinct that had kept her alive through a pirate interdiction near Europa and a depressurization incident in the rings of Saturn. “Match it against known debris databases.”