Chapter 1

The derelict sang to them in a language of failing seals and half-lit corridors. Lira Voss floated through the breach in what had once been the observation ring, her suit thrusters whispering, the salvage cutter a heavy bar across her back. The station’s name was gone, burned away with the registry plates, but the hull still carried the faint gold filigree of a cruise liner that had died in a war no one remembered. Somewhere in the core, the ancient AI kept the lights on in one room only. It liked the ballroom best.

She cycled the inner lock of the last pressurized compartment and the pressure change hit her like a remembered heartbeat. The ballroom opened in a slow bloom of gold and mirrored dark. Crystal chandeliers drifted on their tethers like jellyfish. The air smelled of ozone and the faint metallic sweetness of long-dead flowers. Gravity was low and lazy; it made every movement feel like the first half of a fall.

Across the polished floor, another suit drifted in the opposite lock. The rival. She’d seen the name stenciled on the battered hopper parked on the outer ring: *Harrow*. Its pilot was already unbuckling her helmet, dark hair spilling free in the gentle spin. The woman’s face was sharp, sun-browned, the kind that smiled at the worst possible moment. Lira had met her twice before—once over a contested reactor core, once through the thin threat of open comms. Both times the woman had taken the better prize and left Lira with the scrap.

“Voss,” the woman said, voice carrying clean in the recycled air. “Still chasing my wake.”

“Talley.” Lira popped her own seals and let the helmet drift. The low gravity turned the motion into something almost graceful. “You’re early. I had bets on you being two days behind the schedule you sold me.”

Talley’s laugh was short, bright, and it made the chandeliers stir. “I sold you the schedule you wanted. Doesn’t mean I kept it.” She pushed off the bulkhead with one boot and coasted, boots skimming the floor in little taps that sent her into a slow arc. The suit peeled away from her shoulders as she moved, revealing the reinforced flight suit beneath—scars, patches, the faint glow of a personal field generator at her sternum. “Room’s big enough for two. AI doesn’t seem to mind.”

The music rose then, unasked. A low, swaying string arrangement, old and warm, the kind of melody that belonged to people who still believed in orbits that lasted. The AI had taste, at least. Lira watched the lights dim a shade, the way they always did when the dance program engaged. She felt the tug in her chest the same way she felt the station’s failing spin—something ancient trying to remember how bodies moved when they weren’t fighting for air.

They worked in silence for a while, or close enough. Lira anchored her cutter to a service panel along the aft bulkhead and began the slow, careful extraction of the auxiliary life-support manifold. Talley took the forward bar, where the emergency beacon relays still glowed faint green. The ballroom watched them with its thousand reflected selves. Every mirrored wall caught the slow drift of their tools and the occasional brush of a boot against the other woman’s shoulder when trajectories crossed too close.

“You always take the hard jobs,” Talley said eventually, voice low under the music. She had one knee braced against a chandelier tether, body angled so the low gravity made her look longer, lazier. “Could’ve gone for the easy salvage on the outer rings. Instead you’re here, digging in the heart.”

Lira’s torch hissed, a neat blue line through alloy. “Heart’s where the good parts are.” She didn’t look up. “You know that as well as I do.”

Talley hummed, noncommittal. The string arrangement swelled. Somewhere in the walls the AI adjusted the reverb, softening the edges so the melody felt like it belonged inside skin instead of speakers. Lira felt the change in pressure behind her ears and knew the system was playing favorites again.

They crossed paths at the center of the floor. Lira had a coil of cabling in one gloved hand; Talley carried a tray of intact data cores. Their paths intersected at the precise angle the low gravity demanded. Lira reached to steady herself against the nearest bulkhead and found Talley’s forearm instead. The contact was brief, gloved, but the warmth bled through the thin material of the flight suits like a secret passed between stations.

Neither of them moved away immediately.

“You’re leaking at the elbow,” Talley said quietly. Her free hand came up, thumb brushing the seam where Lira’s suit had caught on a jagged spar earlier. The gesture was clinical, almost, except for the way her eyes stayed on Lira’s face instead of the repair.

Lira swallowed. “It’s sealed.”

“For now.” Talley’s thumb lingered half a second longer than necessary. The music shifted key. A single cello line rose above the rest, lonely and deliberate. “You could let the AI patch it. It’s been offering since you came in.”

“I don’t trust what it offers.”

Talley’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Smart. But it’s kept this room alive for thirty years. Maybe it just wants company that still has a pulse.”

They separated with the slow inevitability of two objects on intersecting orbits. Lira returned to the manifold. Talley drifted toward the forward bar again. The chandeliers turned above them like patient stars. Every few minutes the AI adjusted the volume, matching the rhythm of their work, softening when they were apart, swelling when their paths brought them close enough to share the same column of air.

Lira finished the manifold extraction and sealed the panel. The station’s spin was decaying; she could feel the gradual list in the floor under her boots. Soon the ballroom would lose even this ghost of gravity. She wondered if the AI would keep playing when the air finally bled away.

Talley’s voice came from the forward lock, softer than before. “Next cycle I’m bringing a bottle. Real glass, not the squeeze packs. If you’re still here.”

Lira turned. The other woman was already half in her suit again, helmet tucked under one arm. The music had dropped to a single sustained note, waiting.

“I’ll be here,” Lira said. The words felt like an admission she hadn’t planned to make.

Talley nodded once, sharp and satisfied, then cycled out. The lock sealed behind her. The ballroom exhaled. The AI let the music breathe again, fuller this time, the strings returning in a slow, circling harmony that sounded almost like an invitation.

Lira stayed a moment longer, floating in the center of the mirrored dark. She could still feel the ghost pressure of Talley’s thumb on her sleeve. Above her the chandeliers turned, reflecting nothing but the slow spin of two suits that had almost touched.

The derelict kept singing.