The black of space opened wide as the Obsidian Wraith slipped out of its FTL corridor, its sleek frame gliding into realspace like a silent predator surfacing from a current. Ahead, suspended like a deity of engineered purpose, loomed the Ashen Relay Hub 7.
Even at this distance, it dominated the view.
The Relay didn't just float, it commanded. A structure over a hundred kilometers across, circular and massive, its silver-white alloy hull reflected the muted light of a distant star. Rotating rings interlocked at varied angles, some spinning slowly with planetary grace, others oscillating with pulse-thrust momentum. Spines of radiant crystal conduits ran along its arms like glowing veins, pulsating with an internal rhythm too old and too perfect to be human in origin.
No structure should be that big and still feel elegant. And yet, this one did. Like it had always been there.
Ethan leaned forward slightly in his pilot seat, the HUD lighting his face with soft readouts. His eyes drank in the sight, a bit with the excitement of a tourist, but also with the cautious reverence of someone who knew not to take ancient alien things for granted after his adventures in Kynara.
"Iris," he murmured, his voice low but steady. "Initiate approach protocol."
"Confirmed," she replied, her tone crisp. "We are within arrival perimeter. Navigational systems syncing with Relay Hub 7 vector grid. Estimating traffic density… high. Assigning optimal entry path."
The starfield shifted as the Wraith adjusted its heading. Off the flanks, the Relay's defense perimeter became visible: sentry platforms like floating fangs, uncountable number of Federation destroyers, cruisers and frigates drifting in patterned patrols, and a scatter of detection satellites glinting in starlight. Their sensors swept invisibly through the void, eyes that never blinked.
High-frequency traffic lanes blinked to life in the pilot display. Ethan followed them into the holding pattern, a vast aerial ballet of waiting ships and military precision.
He caught glimpses of them as they drifted past.
A merchant freighter, boxy and old, with a hull scorched from solar abrasion and haphazard repair.
A research vessel, long and thin, with slowly rotating midship rings for gravity simulation and glowing antennae sprouting from its prow like insect limbs.
A diplomatic courier, gleaming with polished hulls and bristling with escort fighters, their formations tight and aggressive.
And among them, ships like his own, solo vessels. Modified corvettes, scout-class cruisers, frigates with lean profiles and camouflaged skins. The kind of ships that weren't tied to any one faction. The kind built to survive.
"Quite the traffic," Ethan muttered.
Above, holographic grids flickered, shifting like translucent spiderwebs across the orbital plane. He could see AI drones maneuvering smaller crafts into position, projecting course corrections and issuing silent, visual instructions in Federation Standard glyphs. It was chaos, organized, efficient chaos. Like a dance choreographed by a mind too fast to be human.
Ethan's gaze sharpened as a military patrol cutter detached from a satellite ring and angled toward him. His comm system chirped, opening on a secure channel.
"Unidentified military-class vessel: You are approaching a restricted jump corridor. Identify yourself."
He tapped the control panel, activating the comm response. "This is Ethan Walker, Obsidian Wraith. Registered mercenary vessel. ID transmitting now."
Iris took over, voice level and businesslike.
"Encrypted credentials uploading: Ship registry, Mercenary Guild designation, travel permissions authorized for intersector transit. Routing confirmation: Ashen–Beltrax–Aldaron–Enover–Haltris–Caryth."
Silence.
Then came the expected, that cold moment of uncertainty where machines and men scanned everything they could.
Ethan leaned back in his seat, watching the patrol cruiser adjust slightly, not locking weapons, but clearly ready to. One wrong signature, one unrecognized subsystem, and his entire journey could end before it began.
He sipped calmly from his citrus beverage, eyes never leaving the shifting silhouette of the cruiser.
"Infrared sweep complete," Iris reported. "Psionic suppression field active. Anti-stealth scan engaged. Matching registry… 97% match… 99%..."
Then the voice returned:
"Obsidian Wraith — clearance verified. Proceed to Gate Column Fourteen. Follow vector beacon gamma-blue."
Ethan exhaled, the tension releasing from his shoulders like melted ice.
"Always smooth," he murmured. "Until it isn't."
The designated vector beacon blinked on the HUD, a thin blue line that curved toward the Relay's spinal entry ring.
As he eased the throttle and the ship began to align, Ethan took in the approach to Gate Column 14.
It was like flying into the heart of a star engine.
The gate columns, dozens of them, encircled the Relay's core in slowly drifting orbits. Each one was a monolithic shaft, kilometers long, sheathed in armor plating and crystalline node lines. Gravitic tethers anchored them to the Relay's rotational field, and arc-spires fired bursts of energy into their cores in sequence, like breathing lungs of power.
The one ahead of him was marked with an illuminated numeric glyph, flickering from heat exhaust: Column 14.
As the Wraith coasted into final alignment, the central channel of Gate Column 14 began to stir.
At first, it was a subtle shift. A low vibration, more felt than heard, humming through the ship's reinforced hull like a distant heartbeat. Then, with a graceful but immense motion, the core corridor of the column peeled open, layers of transparent metal separating like petals of light, revealing a tunnel of roiling force-fields and pulsing magnetic flux. It was as though the universe itself had cracked open to reveal the veins of a god.
Inside, the tunnel shimmered, not with light as known to human eyes, but with some deeper energy. A storm of reality folded and stitched along lines of gravity and timeless code. Thin streams of plasma danced along containment rails, and the reinforced tunnel seemed both impossibly solid and entirely ephemeral, held together by will more than matter.
In the cockpit, the lights dimmed as expected. The Wraith's systems adjusted automatically, filtering out the intense radiation that rippled from the Relay's heart. The shadows shifted across the control panel, bathing Ethan in the soft blue-white pulse of incoming jump energy.
Outside, tiny arcs of electrical discharge danced across the ship's outer plating, harmless but dramatic, like fingers of lightning welcoming the craft into something beyond comprehension.
"Docking corridor lock confirmed," Iris announced, her voice as steady as ever, though it echoed faintly now with a reverent undertone. "Gravitational tether engaged. Awaiting final jump sequence activation."
Ethan sat forward, resting one gloved hand gently against the console.
And looked up.
Looked through.
Toward the Relay's luminous core, where the arcs converged, not into light, but into motion, into meaning. The structure no longer seemed mechanical. Not entirely. Its scale defied logic. Its design language, untranslatable. Ancient. Pre-Federation. Pre-history.
This wasn't something someone had built in the traditional sense. This was something that had been uncovered, claimed, repurposed. And even now, after all these centuries, it refused to be anything less than divine.
It wasn't just a machine.
It was a monument.
A remnant of an age when stars were tools and war was etched into the very fabric of spacetime. Something far older than the Federation, or the Empire before it. Something that still lived in its cycles, its pulse, its patience.
Ethan swallowed once, slowly.
He could feel it beneath the awe, like a whisper under static. Something alien. Something sovereign. It didn't move like a machine. It breathed. It watched. And somewhere in that silence between activation pulses, he had the strange feeling… that it remembered.
He gave a low whistle, more out of respect than surprise. His voice was a breath, caught between awe and disbelief.
"Engine of a divine…" he murmured.
The words hung in the air, quickly swallowed by the ship's soundproofing and the low thrum of rising energy. No reply came. Not from Iris. Not from the Relay.
But Ethan could feel it.
Not conscious. Not communicative.
But aware.
The Relay was listening.
And in its own timeless, unknowable way…
It was ready.