“You okay, Captain? Looks like you just saw a ghost.” The concern in Jahns’ voice was unmistakable, even over the suit’s intercoms.

 

“Fine. Still shaking off the aftereffects of the hiberhammock,” I responded. Three weeks in hibernation had a way of clouding the senses like a hazy hallucination.

 

Cold sweat drenched my brow, and my faceplate had fogged over, the result of ragged breathing. I fought off the impending panic attack and regained my bearings in the ship’s weightless interior.

 

My shoulder-mounted flashlight punched a beam of light through the pitch black interior, revealing ubiquitous particulate and confirming the Hambali’s ventilation systems were offline. The readout on my faceplate began populating data from the ship’s schematics, relayed from a remote Carry-Canary I’d dispatched moments ago. Red flashing characters rolled across the readout, confirming my suspicions.

 

“So much for a quick flip,” I told my crew. “Birdie scans show the ship’s mainlines are all down.”

 

Groans erupted from the comms.

 

“Tell us something we don’t know.” Schuyler shot me her trademark stare of skepticism from the outer airlock. “This sector of the belt has been gutted for over 20 years. Nothing left but hollowed out rocks, tailing fields, and cannibalized vessels here in the Skagway.”

 

“We’ve been over this already. My source in Dysnomia's dockyards has given me nothing but solid leads and you’d best believe we’ll milk him for all he’s worth,” I said, the tone in my voice brooking no argument. “Now let’s get this rust bucket in working order before the corporate overhaulers catch our scent.”

 

Focusing on my faceplate readout, I drifted down the ship’s main artery in search of the fusion reactor.

 

“Split up, take different decks, and grab any salvageables. We’ll reconvene once I’m done rebooting the ship’s mainlines,” I told my crew over the intercom.

 

Switching off my 'coms, I advanced towards a cramped, central chamber containing the ship’s large, cylindrical reactors. After patching my wrist-mounted technical into a nearby display panel, I executed a reboot. Immediately, the ship's interior hummed to life like some long dormant creature awakening. At the same time, its wall-based lighting strips came online, revealing stainless steel innards covered in dust.

 

I then followed my readout towards the life support systems station, tucked at the end of a long corridor two flight decks above me. Nausea overtook me as I neared my destination, and the hiberhammock’s residual effects began to once again clutter my thoughts. Soon an alcove appeared on the right, and in it an unsettling object that contrasted sharply with its surroundings.

 

Something resembling a broad slab of metal or stone lay in the alcove, and appeared to have melded with the surrounding paneling. Its surface glittered subtly like granite, and appeared to be a composite of intricate crystalline structures with three-dimensional complexity. Looking too closely at all of the intersecting veins and lattices made my head hurt. There were too many angles, all folding in on themselves and rearranging into impossibly complex matrices without geometric boundaries.

 

The strangest part was a softball-sized orb of the same substance suspended just within a perfectly contoured hollow of the slab. Independent of the larger artifact, it hung in unmoving suspension.

 

There was something eerily familiar about my discovery, like an elusive word on the tip of my tongue. Whatever it was, I knew it shouldn’t have been there. Unsurprisingly, the Carry-Canary hadn't registered its presence.

 

With considerable effort, I wrenched my gaze away from the artifact and continued down the corridor, towards oxygenation and ventilation modules needing technical triage. After a quick diagnostic, I recalibrated the modules’ data buses, allowing their procs to resync with the mainframe. Soon the air vents began softly humming, and the haze of particulate slowly dissipated. Meanwhile, I continued pondering my discovery. How valuable is it? Can it be extracted and brought back to Dysnomia’s bazaars?

 

Truth was, I felt like I'd seen something much more ominous than a ghost. Some type of bleedover for another time or place. Something inhuman. I thought again of the Skagway and how rich in ores it once was. Did we dig too deep, disturb something better left buried?

 

I brought up the ship’s power grid on my technical, locating the remaining bottlenecks. After reaching a shorted substation, I linked up to its core and began the triage. Barely realizing it, I yanked the feed from the console and ditched the effort. The lights began flickering again, thanks to my violent disconnect. Can’t concentrate, not with the thought of that damnable thing boring through my head. Soon, my memory began to fail me. I couldn’t recall who had given me the Hambali’s coordinates, or how I'd even arrived here. But none of that mattered anymore. I had to get back to the artifact.

 

Every second of every minute became a torment; I flailed through the Hambali’s zero-g corridors haphazardly, gashing hands and knees on meters and gauges protruding from the walls. Sweat slicked my brow, back, and palms as I scrambled to sate the unnatural craving growing inside me.

 

As I neared the artifact, I felt another wave of nausea. The urge to touch it, once insignificant, had become irresistible. Almost greedily, I grabbed at the orb. It felt wrong to the touch, and immediately, everything changed.

 

“You okay, Captain? Looks like you just saw a ghost.”