Min had stared at the code for three years. It was stamped on the inner hull of the deep-space salvage vessel Rake , just above the emergency oxygen scrubbers. To the crew, it was just a serial number for a missing maintenance drone. To Min, it was the last known coordinates of her older sister, Jae.
Min closed her eyes. For three years, she had needed to know if Jae had suffered. Now she knew. She had been afraid. She had been brave. And she had been murdered by the very corporation that signed her paychecks.
She slotted it into her suit’s reader. ATID-60202-47-44 Min
Static.
Forty-seven degrees, forty-four minutes. The angle of the distress beacon’s final vector before it was swallowed by the accretion disk of a dead star. Min had stared at the code for three years
The designation was . It wasn’t a name. It was a log entry, a line in a spreadsheet, a ghost in the machine.
Min had nodded, her face blank. But she didn’t go to the server room. She went to the airlock. To Min, it was the last known coordinates
She pulled the heavy insulated gloves over her hands, the worn fabric smelling of recycled air and old coffee. The Rake ’s captain, a woman named Sloane with a face like cracked leather, had given the order two hours ago: "Purge the old logs. We need storage for the new navigation maps."
Min detached the data core and placed it in a shielded pouch over her heart. Then she activated her suit’s long-range transmitter.
She cut the channel and set a new course. Not toward the salvage vessel. Not toward the nearest spaceport. Toward the relay station on Titan, where a journalist was waiting for proof of the ATID cover-up.
"ATID-60202-47-44," she whispered into her suit’s comm, overriding the safety locks with a bypass code she’d spent six months stealing. "Min, initiating solo EVA."