Getting Luna docked against the freighter's hull took Rhea about ten minutes of swearing and sweating. The docking collar on the hull was blasted off, the magnetic clamps uneven and the whole thing groaned like it resented being touched.
"She's not going anywhere," Rhea said finally, unbuckling. "But she's not happy about it."
"Story of this whole trip," Ash muttered.
They suited up in light EVA gear. Its a thin, patched suit with sealed helmets and masks. The visors fogged for a second before clearing. Ash checked the Gauss Pistol on his thigh, a compact tech based sidearm that fires short, focused energy beams. Rhea did the same, her own pistol already holstered.
"Ready?" Rhea asked
Ash nodded. "Let's get this over with."
The smell hit first. Stale air, burnt insulation, and something underneath that Ash couldn't name but didn't like.
The corridor beyond the docking collar was dark except for the emergency strips running along the floor.
"Cargo bay first," Rhea said, her torch cutting through the dark ahead of her.Ash followed.
The cargo bay was at the rear, behind two sets of manually cranked doors that Rhea opened with more ease than she should've been able to. She just ran her fingers along the rusted track and the resistance gave up. Metal Weave certainly is efficient.
Inside, the bay was half stripped. Whoever had been here before them had taken the obvious stuff. Loose crates, equipment racks, anything that doesn't need a second look.
"Hounds," Ash said.
Rhea crouched near an overturned crate, looked at it for a second, then stood.
"Yeah, it looks like they got here before us and took the obvious stuff. Probably didn't know what they were looking at." She swept her torch across the walls slowly. "Or what they were missing."
She pressed her palm flat against the far wall.
Blue Metal Weave threads spun out from her fingers, spreading thin across the surface, reading the structure beneath. She moved along the wall slowly, then she stopped and pressed harder on a particular part of the wall .
"There," she said quietly.
The false wall gave way under her and a panel slid back to reveal a compartment built flush into the ship's frame. Whoever constructed it had been careful. Inside, packed tight and deliberately unmarked was the real cargo they were looking for.
Arc Cells in foam lined cases, each one military grade. Phase Crystals wrapped in insulated cloth, half a dozen of them.
Rhea pulls each item out and sets it aside.
Then she reached the back of the compartment and went still.
"Luminar Capsules," she said. Almost to herself.
Six units, each in individual sealed casings, packed separately from everything else. Through the small inspection window on each one a faint inner light pulsed.
Ash crouched beside her. "All of them?"
"Yeah" Rhea confirmed
Luminar Capsules are the kind of thing you heard about in whispers on the rim but rarely see it with your own eyes.
They stabilised navigation systems past the charted space. Without them, long haul independent ships flew half blind past the outer markers. With them you could plot a course through dead space and actually trust it. The material inside came from processed remnants of collapsed star clusters, and the people who knew how to do that processing didn't work cheap or quiet.
The Conclave kept a stranglehold on distribution and everyone else paid whatever they were told.
Six intact, live units sitting in a bolted crate on an abandoned wreck.Someone had been running a very quiet supply line.Ash stared at the capsules for a long moment, then looked at Rhea.
"Do you think Zelth might be involved? Or at least know about this?"
"Maybe, Zelth knows about every shady deal happening in this system, from here all the way to Careyn Hub, Kaelis, and even Obisara. If anyone's moving high end Conclave tech, he either supplied it or heard about it first." Rhea replied
"I can't believe they didn't take it," Ash muttered.
Rhea glanced back at the false wall.
"Honestly whoever built this knew what they were doing. Pretty easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for ." She stood and dusted her hands off. "Either way, their loss."
"You know, this is the biggest find we've ever got," Ash said. "The Arc Cells and Crystals alone could get us a lump sum that sets us up for a while, plus improve our gear and maybe even Luna." He paused, looking at the Luminar Capsules. "But especially these ones... it's such a rare find that we'll probably never see them again. I don't know, could come in handy someday. So what do you say?"
"I don't know. It's not like we're going on a voyage through deep space." She paused, then added, "Maybe we can keep half of it. Either way, let's get out of here first before someone else comes sniffing around."
They didn't dig into the ship's story. Whatever went wrong here wasn't their problem. They worked fast with Rhea on the Luminar Capsules container, and Ash sweeping the side storage lockers. He turned up two rolls of high grade sealant tape and a portable arc welder still in its original casing.But the Luminar Capsules were the real score and they both know it.
"We good?" Ash asked."We're good," Rhea said. "Let's move."
They were back through the docking collar and sealed up inside the Luna in under twenty minutes. Rhea had the clamps disengaged before Ash even finished stowing the gear in the back.
"Nice and easy," Ash said, dropping into the co-pilot seat.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Say things like that."
The short range scanner lit up before he could respond.Two signals.
Sitting dead still about four hundred metres off their port side, tucked in behind a wide flat rock like they'd been lying in wait the whole time .Ash stared at the display.
"How long have they been there?"
"Long enough," Rhea said. Her voice had gone flat. "Probably the whole time we were inside."