Fresh license in your pocket and the keys to your first vessel, you set course for home.

But the trade lanes aren't what they used to be. Halfway through the asteroid corridor your comms light up — scrap-rigged engines, pirate signatures closing fast. No life signs aboard — just unmanned drone hulls the cartels set loose to pick off graduates like you.

There's no turning back, Brian. Fight your way home.

The last engine spools down. Home — or what is left of it.

The roof torn open to the stars. The rooms gutted, cold, still smoking. Brian moves through the wreckage in silence, sorrowfully turning over the old things — the family portrait still hanging on the broken wall, the shattered china, the little things they touched every day — searching for any sign, any trace, of where his wife and daughter so suddenly vanished.

Whoever did this left nothing behind. Except — there, pinned under the shattered china — a fold of paper.

Her handwriting, Brian.

The Kurtars. Slave traders — they trawl the burnt-out systems and sell what they take in the flesh markets under Betelgeuse's dying red light.

Half a galaxy from here. It doesn't matter.

They're alive, Brian. Set course for Betelgeuse.

Through the last of the escort fleet, and there it lies: the market. Pontoon harbors and auction blocks strung through the wrecks, every berth guarded, every lane watched, all of it soaked in Betelgeuse's dying red light.

Somewhere in there is a ledger with two names in it.

Go and read it, Brian.

The Warden's flagship burns out over the Iron Nursery, and in the sudden quiet a small shape climbs through your airlock — thinner than you remember, eyes too old for her face. But alive. Alive.

She doesn't cry. She looks back once at the red horizon, then up at you:

“Dad… they took Mom on the big ship. The one with the golden hull. I memorized its name.”

The search continues — together. Her story picks up in a coming chapter. Until then, the lanes around the Ember Market are still crawling… and now there are two of you aboard.