Farther out in the system, there was a dead star.
It didn't shine anymore. It just sat there, dim and empty.
Whatever pull it used to have over the space around it was gone now, and what remained was a quiet, broken place filled with drifting rock and scattered debris.
Some of it was small enough to pass without notice, while other pieces were large enough that they might once have been called worlds, back when they still had meaning.
Now, they didn't.
There was no life here. No heat. No reason for anything to grow or survive. Just silence, the kind that felt old, like this place had been abandoned for so long that even decay had slowed down and settled into something still.
The target they were looking for sat closer in, resting on one of the larger asteroid masses drifting through that empty space.
At first, it didn't look like anything special.
Just another rock.
But that changed once the drones started scanning it properly.
