The toxic, bruised-purple night of the Barrens had finally settled over the colony. Inside the mid-ring housing module, Jax's family was asleep, their single duffel bags packed and resting by the front door.
Jax stood alone in the small, rusted kitchen. He held a small, unmarked Vanguard comm-cylinder in his hand. He didn't use the local hyper-comm relays—they were compromised by a dozen different warlords. Instead, he sparked a fractional Tier IV Spatial-Shear, cutting a microscopic, encrypted wormhole directly through the local dimension to transmit a raw, untraceable audio signal into the deep dark.
The cylinder hissed with static for a few seconds before a smooth, theatrical, and impossibly arrogant voice echoed into Jax's mind.
"My favorite Sovereign," Cassian's voice crackled, accompanied by the faint, distant sound of shattering glass and what sounded like a high-tier plasma fire. "Tell me you didn't erase a whole continent while my back was turned. I hate missing a good show."
"Just a syndicate compound, Cassian," Jax whispered, a faint smile touching his lips. "Nothing you haven't seen before. How is the hunt for the Foundry?"
"Tedious. The False Gods hide behind very thick, very expensive doors," Cassian sighed. "But I'm making progress. Why are you breaking comm-silence, Jax? You only use the Spatial-Shear when you're on a ticking clock."
"I found them," Jax said softly, looking over his shoulder toward the hallway where his parents and sister slept. "My family is alive. I pulled them out of the mud, but I can't keep them here. The Vanguard is dead, and the core worlds are burning. I need a sanctuary, Cassian. Somewhere completely off the Aether-grids. Have you found anything out there?"
The comm-cylinder went silent for a long moment, the static humming in the dark kitchen.
"A safe haven in the apocalypse is a tall order," Cassian finally replied, his tone losing its usual playful edge. "But... I did intercept some rather amusing chatter on a black-market trading asteroid three sectors over. A crew of deep-space scavengers woke up in an alleyway with their ship stripped down to the bolts. They were raving about a ghost-world in the deep null."
Jax's eyes narrowed. "A ghost-world?"
"A planet with zero ambient Aether, completely invisible to the Leviathans and the Vanguard star charts," Cassian explained. "The scavengers claimed it was a lush, untouched paradise. White sand beaches, clean water, blue skies. They thought they had hit the jackpot."
"What happened?"
"They got ambushed before they even touched the dirt," Cassian chuckled. "They said the shadows inside their ship came alive and disabled their crew in ten seconds flat. But the interesting part was the man on the ground. The scavengers claimed a single man materialized beneath their drop-ship and punched their repulsor lifts into oblivion. They said he hit like a falling mountain, and his skin was covered in the distinct, heavy-grey sheen of an Iron-Ant core."
Jax's breath caught in his throat.
"An Ant core?" Jax asked, his mind flashing back to the violet fog of the eastern ravines, and the grizzled Vanguard Captain who had taught him how to carry the weight of the universe. "Are they sure? An Iron-Ant core requires massive kinetic proficiency to keep from crushing your own joints under the mass."
"The pirates were terrified, Jax. They said the man was a walking gravitational anomaly. He was incredibly proficient," Cassian said. "Unfortunately, because they were unconscious when their ship was dumped on the trading asteroid, they lost the exact slipstream coordinates. They only have a rough estimate of the sector."
Jax stared at the rusted metal table. A man with an Iron-Ant core protecting a hidden beach. It was a massive galaxy, and the Vanguard had issued thousands of Ant-class cores, but...
Captain Vance, Jax thought, his heart beating a little faster. Could he really have made it?
"Send me the rough coordinates, Cassian," Jax said, his voice firming up with absolute resolve. "Send me the entire sector map."
"Transmitting now," Cassian said. A tiny hololithic projection of a vast, empty star-sector blossomed from the comm-cylinder. "It's a massive haystack, Jax. And if there really is an Inquisition ghost and an Iron-Ant juggernaut guarding it, you might get a rough welcome."
"If it's who I think it is, I owe him a rematch anyway," Jax smiled. "Be safe in the dark, Cassian."
"Always am. Cassian out."
The comm-cylinder went dark.
Jax walked down the narrow hallway and gently knocked on the doorframe of the back bedroom. His father and mother were already awake, sitting on the edge of the cot, fully dressed. Mia was curled up on the floor, clutching her small canvas bag.
"Is it time?" his father asked quietly.
"It's time," Jax nodded. "I have a lead on a world. It might take some searching, but I think someone I trust is already there holding the door for us."
Within ten minutes, the family slipped out the back door of the housing module. The Barrens was deadly quiet, the entire Rust-Maw syndicate having been erased from existence just hours prior. No one stopped them. No one even saw them.
They walked two miles to the edge of the city, navigating the rusted skeletons of the old refineries until the air rippled in front of them.
Jax tapped his wrist-comm, and the sleek, unmarked stealth shuttle decloaked, its boarding ramp lowering with a quiet hiss.
Martha gasped, placing a hand over her mouth as she looked at the pristine, state-of-the-art vessel. Mia's eyes were wide as saucers. Even Jax's father, a man who had spent his life working in the grime of the Vanguard's industrial machine, looked awestruck.
"Come on," Jax said, leading them up the ramp. "Let's get off this rock."
Jax settled into the pilot's seat, his fingers flying across the glowing control console. He routed the coordinates Cassian had sent him directly into the slipstream nav-computer. Behind him, his family strapped into the heavy, leather crash-seats, holding onto each other's hands.
"Engaging active camouflage," Jax announced, his hands moving with practiced, lethal efficiency. "Prepping slipstream drive."
The shuttle lifted off the dirt, silently rising above the smog, above the neon graffiti, and above the broken remains of the colony. In seconds, they broke the atmosphere, leaving the bruised, dying sky of the Barrens behind them.
In front of them was the terrifying, beautiful expanse of the fractured universe.
Jax gripped the throttle, the golden light of the Sovereign sparking faintly in his eyes as he looked out into the deep null. He didn't know exactly where the beach was, or if Captain Vance was really the one guarding it, but he was going to tear the sector apart until he found it.
"Hold on," Jax whispered.
He pushed the throttle forward, and the stealth shuttle folded into the stars.