Matthews rubbed his gloved hands together in a futile attempt to keep warm. His Talon starfighter floated amidst the icy rocks of an asteroid belt orbiting Eris, the dwarf planet barely visible in the distance. The ship’s systems were on their lowest power settings, and unfortunately, that included the heating. The cold seeped through his flight suit, biting at his skin, while the darkness of the cockpit pressed in around him, broken only by the faintest glow from his instruments. The gravity generators were completely offline, leaving him weightless, strapped into his pilot’s couch by a harness.
He’d been on deep recon missions before during his time with the GA, but never this far from civilisation, never in such a dangerous part of space. Wild Space was treacherous enough on its own, but here, orbiting a stronghold of the Red Brotherhood, Matthews knew one wrong move could get him killed—or worse, captured.
He glanced at his screens, the low-power mode dimming the cockpit to a bare whisper of light. His eyes had long adjusted, though the darkness only amplified the eerie silence around him. The occasional ping of his sensors kept him company, reminding him that he wasn’t alone out here. There were ships out there. A lot of them.
From the fragmented data his sensors could gather, he was looking at a fleet of military-class ships. Frigates and corvettes moved in formation, while the bulkier silhouette of a destroyer loomed on the far edge of the system. This was the Red Brotherhood fleet—the elusive scourge of the solar system. For years, they had been a ghost fleet, striking targets and disappearing without a trace, always a step ahead of the authorities. Masters of hit-and-run tactics, they knew the dark void of space better than anyone. There were countless places to hide in the depths, and Matthews suspected Eris wasn’t their only sanctuary.
His mission was straightforward, if not simple: infiltrate the local system, gather as much intel as possible, and, if the opportunity arose, find a way inside the Red Brotherhood’s base on the planet’s surface. But the longer he drifted here, the more he felt the weight of just how alone he was. One pilot against an entire fleet. If they discovered him, he’d be dust in the cold expanse of space before he could even power up his weapons.
His eyes flicked to a signal on his display—a cargo transport, its signature small but distinct. For the past four hours, he had been watching it make repeated trips to and from Eris’s surface. Supplies, maybe? Or weapons, reinforcements? Whatever it was hauling, it was important enough to warrant frequent runs.
“And now it’ll jump,” he muttered to himself. Sure enough, the transport’s signal flickered, blipped, and then vanished, swallowed by the void as it made a quantum slip jump out of the system. Matthews clenched his jaw. That cargo ship might be their ticket inside the base, if only he could ascertain where it jumped to before it slipped away again.
But for now, all he could do was wait and watch. The cold, the silence, the weight of the mission—it pressed down on him, but Matthews knew he had to stay patient. Timing was everything.
