Skinner tore his eyes away from the sphere of strange, glowing light. “Lumos, keep me updated on the readings. We need to issue a wide-band distress signal.”

“Captain, a wide-band distress signal will reveal our position to every ship within listening distance. If the Dark Space Buoys relay it far enough, the Constellation ships that pursued you to Myhrede could be the ones to answer.”

“I know that,” Skinner said. “But watching the data you’re collecting from that energy signature, I think something big is about to happen. If we don’t send some kind of distress signal, who knows what it’s capable of.”

“If you are absolutely certain, Captain, I will issue the distress call,” Lumos said.

Skinner turned away from the glass and looked at one of the screens near the captain’s seat. Lumos was streaming data across it at an astonishing rate as she scanned the anomaly. “Is there anything you can tell me about what it’s doing before we yell for help?” Skinner asked, taking a deep breath.

“Currently, very little. It seems to be building an enormous amount of Type-II radiation in one place. There is an oscillating signal pulse which appears to be a message, but I cannot translate it.” Lumos sounded irritated by her inability to provide more data.

He sighed at last. “Go ahead and broadcast,” he told her. “Let’s make this someone else’s problem. I want to get back to harvesting wrecks and not worrying about… well… whatever this crap is.”

“Affirmative, Captain. Please stand by – broadcasting.”

Skinner walked over to the window again, looking down at Schunston. The sphere of light and the negative zone around it were larger than when he’d last looked. A huge part of him was curious about what it was. Another part didn’t care. Curiosity would get him killed faster than anything – he wasn’t a fighter or a soldier. He wasn’t about to go poking his nose into everything that piqued his interest. He’d barely escaped from that creature in Cutlep’s labs. This was probably a million times worse.

Several DSI signatures winked into existence nearby. The nanowires in his window called them out, identifying them as they flew within range. Five ships in total had answered his distress signal. Two of them were Scain Paradigm-class frigates, built for long-range combat and maneuverability. They gleamed so brightly that even from several kilometers away he could pick out the glints of starlight off the hulls. Any closer and he’d have been able to see his reflection in their armor.

The next two were Zyzyt Fast Attack Craft. Fighters, by the looks of it, built for speed and damage. He’d seen videos of Zyzyt fighter craft in action – a small swarm of them were like termites descending on a rotted log. They could rip larger ships apart with their weapons in record amounts of times. As the Zyzyt and their ships lacked the tonnage to go several rounds with larger, more durable craft they had learned to rely on disabling larger ships very quickly.

The last one, though, made him freeze where he stood. It had boldly jumped to within a few kilometers of him, unafraid of what it might find. It was an enormous Heil cruiser, armed to the teeth with all manner of weapons. The main guns had been extended and spines ran along the ship’s lateral lines. It looked like a cross between some kind of horrifying, deep-sea fish and a porcupine. A very angry, gun-wielding porcupine.

“Captain, the leading ship is hailing us,” Lumos announced. “Shall we answer?”

“Well we didn’t call them all the way out here to be rude, did we?” he asked, pushing himself away from the windows and walking over to the communications deck. He switched his lines to open, picking up the handheld microphone. “This is Captain Maxwell E. Skinner of the Dangerous. I read you.”

The response was immediate. A female Heil’s voice echoed into the bridge of his ship, loud and full of authority. “And this is Senate Hunter 125-Aksak, Vice-Captain of the LRRC Winds of Fury. Your ship is not registered in any known database in Senate Space or the Colony Registries. Please provide a Ship ID, Captain Skinner.”

Skinner choked, almost inhaling the microphone. A Senate Hunter? Here? “Lumos, we done goofed. Big time,” he said, fumbling for one of the cheap Data Pads he kept near the bridge. One of them contained a record of forged Ship IDs for emergency situations. “This is Captain Skinner. Ship ID is 71-0523711-D,” he said into the microphone, reading off the most recent number.

“Affirmative, Captain Skinner,” Aksak responded. “We are sending a docking party over to link with you. What is the status of your ship?”

“Stable, but it’s seen better days. Be careful with that landing party – if you knock something loose, I might be stuck out here for weeks,” he said. He mentally ran through a checklist of his docking bay. Located on the starboard side of his ship, it was supposed to allow smaller ships, such as shuttles, to ferry goods and supplies between the Dangerous and the surface. He’d never really used it, as most of his supply runs had been manual.

“Acknowledged. Senate Hunter 286-Nehuasta is on route to your ship along with a contingent of armed forces. Please disarm any weapons you may be carrying and meet her at your docking bay. 125-Aksak out.”

Skinner dropped the microphone and suppressed a shiver. Senate Hunters were horrible, horrible news on the Frontier. No matter where they went, chaos seemed to follow. Officially, Senate Hunters didn’t operate in the Frontier – it would be a breach of the Boundary Truce and could incite an all-out war with the Constellation. That was the official statement, anyway. It was the worst-kept secret in the Galaxy that the Senate Hunters routinely skimmed the Frontier. It was also a known fact that the Constellation sent the Dauntless—their version of the Senate Hunters—to patrol the area as well.

An Oberon-class shuttle was on its way over to the Dangerous, and Skinner wasted no time in racing back to his docking bay, snatching up his helmet and putting it on as he went. He ran down the starboard hallway towards the rear of the ship, tripping over his own feet as he went. Keeping a Senate Hunter waiting wasn’t smart. They were volatile and insane at best and downright murderous at worst. He’d heard stories of Senate Hunters killing entire crews of people with little to no provocation.

“Captain, your vitals are elevated.”

“You don’t say,” he said, hearing the panicky edge to his voice. “I’ve only got two of the top three-hundred bounty hunters in the Galaxy knocking on my spaceship door… do you have any records on these two? Anything to help me out?”

“Accessing records, Captain. Please stand by.” Lumos was quiet for several seconds as Skinner skidded to a halt in front of the airlock leading to the docking bay. He’d piled some crates of spare rations in front of it in his haste to get off Culeria a week ago and had never gotten around to tidying up. He wasn’t exactly accustomed to houseguests – especially not ones that almost counted as royalty. “No records apart from gender found for Senate Hunter 286-Nehuasta, Captain. Minor data recovered for 125-Aksak.”

It figured. Most of the Senate Hunters were almost ghosts anyway. “What do you have?”

“Senate Hunter 125-Aksak is a female Heil who was banished from Sovereign for allegedly subverting the mind of a Priestess of Aruned. When that Priestess was executed, Aksak returned and killed two Hierarchs and fled. After that, she killed twelve different assault teams sent to bring her in while she hunted bounties in Taeski space. The Senate found this impressive enough to offer her amnesty in exchange for her services as a Senate Hunter. She now serves as Vice-Captain to 286-Nehuasta and acts as not only her navigator but also the head of her personal detachment of soldiers.”

“Oh wonderful,” Skinner said. “A homicidal alien serial killer. Just who I want sitting outside my door…”

“To be fair, Captain, I did caution against deploying the distress beacon, although the odds of Senate Hunters answering the call were less than one-tenth of a percent.”

“I know, I know, I know…” Skinner grunted as he shoved the crates out of the airlock to make way for his guests. He could hear the bolts twisting into place as the Oberon-class shuttle docked with the Dangerous. “Guess it’s too late to try escaping now?”

“They are jamming our communications signals, and attempting to activate the DSI reactor would only bring them with us at this point,” Lumos said flatly. “My suggestion is to provide them with the information they want and hope they do not decide killing you is a better recourse than leaving you alive.”

“Oh, thanks for that… really… I wasn’t nervous enough,” Skinner said as he took his pistol and threw it on top of one of the crates. He stepped back away from the door, his heart racing in his chest. “I wasn’t nervous enough without the thought of imminent-friggin’-death hanging over my head.”

The doors hissed open, rattling in their tracks from disuse. An immensely tall figure stood there, silhouetted by the pristine white light of the shuttle. The contrast between ships was staggering; the interior of the Oberon was polished to an iridescent shine with opalescent highlights and silvery accents. The Dangerous looked like it was two steps away from being recommissioned as a public toilet. Skinner gulped as the figure stepped over the threshold, sweeping her head from side to side as she surveyed her surroundings.

She was startlingly tall – at least seven feet tall, if not taller – and towered over Skinner like a giant. Seeing as he was only a hair over five and a half feet tall, he felt like a dwarf next to her. Her armor was polished to a mirror-like finish and reflected his face back at him hundreds of times over. Her suit was also inlaid with hundreds of carvings which marked almost every surface like tattoos – and much like them, seemed to tell stories. There were images of her fighting all kinds of enemies etched into the torso of her armor, which only made it more imposing. But what really set Skinner’s teeth on edge was the helmet.

His helmet was roughly spherical with a clear, nanowire-capable visor. It wasn’t fancy, but it got the job done. This warrior’s, however, had a heart-shaped section on the front that he assumed was some kind of one-way visor; likely polarized to protect her identity. Six horns were attached to it, curling from the sides. The first pair swept out before curving back in to the left and right of where he assumed her eyes were. The second pair was just beneath the first, but also pointed downwards towards the bottom of the helmet. The last set curved upwards like the horns of Satan. Like the rest of her armor, the horns were carved with all kinds of pictograms.

The Senate Hunter regarded him for a cold moment before speaking, her voice heavily modulated by the helmet. “You reek of fear,” she said disdainfully. Her voice was pointed and sharp, cutting through the quiet hum of his spaceship like a glacial knife. “Assemble your crew for debriefing.”

Skinner hadn’t realized how far back against the wall he’d shrunken until she spoke and he realized he couldn’t back further away. “I’m the only one here,” he said. “I am Captain Ski—”

“I know who you are,” she said, waving a four-fingered hand in his general direction as if the very sight of him bothered her. “You dropped a distress beacon out here on the Frontier broadcasting on all frequencies. Why?”

Skinner straightened up as best he could, trying to look as much like a captain as he could. “There is an anomaly on the surface of Schunston directly below us,” he reported. “Neutrino readings plunged into the negative and a disturbance of Type-II radiation is building in the lower atmosphere.”

“Our scans picked that up,” Nehuasta said as several armed guards appeared in the entrance of the shuttle behind her. They were either Heil or Human, judging by their build, and all wore the same polished armor she did. Unlike her, however, they lacked the pictogram carvings that set her apart from the rest of them even more so than her size. “Two of our fighters have begun a near sweep to analyze it closer. What do you know?”

“I was on the ground when it happened, conversing with Researcher Cutlep,” Skinner said. “We were examining an alien artifact recovered from a shipwreck. It went haywire and vaporized Cutlep before making the anomaly appear in the sky.”

Nehuasta stepped forward, her fingers clenching at her sides. “So help me, human, if you don’t straighten up and answer me without a tremor in your voice I am going to simply cut your head off and take your helmet camera,” she snarled. “Your fear is palpable and your lack of a spine annoys me!”

“Yup, makes two of us,” Skinner said without thinking. He winced as soon as he spoke, hoping he hadn’t just signed his death warrant.

The Senate Hunter took another step, this one with far more force, before freezing in place and lifting a hand to her helmet. She nodded for a moment, listening to something on a private channel, before stepping back and straightening back up. “It is due to the… counsel… of my Vice Captain that I am not simply killing you for your cowardice and disrespect,” she said. The tone in her voice gave away how much the act of sparing him disgusted her. “You said you and Researcher Cutlep were analyzing an artifact. Where did you steal it from?”

“I didn’t steal it!” Skinner said, a moment of anger spiking through his veins. “I told you – I found it in a shipwreck. What’s left of that ship is in orbit above Myrtea if you don’t believe me.”

Nehuasta snorted so loudly into her helmet that he heard it. “I barely believe what you’ve already told me. Were it not for the anomaly, I would argue you’d been lying to me from the beginning! Where is this artifact you claim caused this anomaly, human?”

Skinner was about to speak when Lumos interrupted over the loudspeakers, revealing herself for the first time. “Pardon my interruption, Captain, but the anomaly has reached a critical threshold. Hunter Nehuasta, I recommend recalling your ships – with the anomaly reaching such a level, I am no longer certain it is safe.”

Nehuasta responded immediately. “Fighter Ecran and Fighter Didhis, retreat from the anomaly immediately and return to orbit. The object is reaching a critical state, do you understand?” she paused for a moment before turning back to the shuttle and barking at the Heil standing there. “Get on the radio and warn the frigates. There may be trouble!” she then turned back to Skinner. “You and I are going to the bridge – I want to see this thing for myself.”