Burn Window

“Nav solution is ready,” said the coffee maker. “Also, we are out of oat milk, which I consider a crew morale emergency.”

Tobiah floated upside down in the corridor, eating noodles out of a pouch and reading the bounty notice aloud with the relish of a man who had never had a price on his head before.

Captain Reyes pinched the bridge of her nose. Salvage law was very clear about abandoned hardware. It was considerably less clear about hardware that filed complaints.

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The chart was older than the Commonwealth. It showed a route through the Drift that no one had flown and lived, and someone had annotated it in pencil: it’s fine, actually.

The Magpie’s hull groaned through the jump like an old dog getting off a couch.

Afterward, in the galley, nobody said the word family. Nobody had to.