Hunting the hunters had a cost.
The reputation of the "Black Ladybug" was a double-edged blade: it inspired fear, but it also drew unwanted attention. The safe ports of Finite Space grew less safe, the glances in dark corners lingering longer than before. Ishtar was forced to operate at the very edges of the galaxy, in systems where the only law was survival. That meant her supplies and credits were always stretched thin. And nothing lasts forever—brilliant as she was, there were limits to what she could do with the Ladybug.
The asteroid belt known as the "Ring of Bones" was exactly that kind of place: high risk, high reward. Veins of Iridium-7, a rare mineral used in capital ship shields, snaked through the wreckage of an ancient battle. It was a graveyard and a treasure trove. And a notorious pirate hunting ground.
Ishtar was tense. As her mining beam carved into an exposed vein on an asteroid, her eyes flicked constantly between sensor readouts. Every energy signature, every drifting fragment of metal, was a potential threat. She was the predator she had become—but she knew that here, she was prey as well.
Then, suddenly, a blip on the radar. A single ship, light signature, approaching without hostility. Ishtar cut the mining beam, diverting all power to shields and weapons. Her fingers hovered over the controls. The ship came into view: a modified patrol model, improved since the last time she'd seen it, but still nothing sophisticated.
Leo.
A communication request appeared. With an irritated exhale, Ishtar accepted it.
"I knew it was you, Ladybug," Leo's voice came through, calm and familiar. "No one else has the guts to mine here alone. Listen—the offer still stands. This place is crawling today. I keep watch, you mine. I don't want your cargo, just a flat protection fee so I can finally afford a better shield. Pay me twenty percent of whatever you pull out. It's a good deal."
The offer was logical. Smart. Strategically, it was the correct decision.
But Ishtar's mind was no longer purely strategic. It was poisoned. The voice of betrayal, the image of Alexandre's face, screamed louder than logic.
He followed me. It's a trap. He's working with the pirates. He'll wait until my hold is full and then hit me from behind.
"I don't need a babysitter," Ishtar replied, her voice cold as vacuum ice. "The answer is still no. Get out of my scan range."
There was a pause on the other end. An almost inaudible sigh. "All right, Ladybug. Good luck." Leo's blip drifted away on the radar and, in a flash of light, jumped out of the system.
Fifteen minutes passed. Ishtar, relieved that she'd avoided the "trap," returned to mining.
Then the alarm sounded.
Not one—but three hostile contacts, emerging from behind the largest asteroid in the belt. Pirates. Their ships were brutish, built for impact. The ambush she'd feared from Leo materialized in a far more tangible form.
Ishtar was brilliant, but the math was merciless.
She dove, using an asteroid as cover, and jettisoned the plasma tanks she'd been mining. The resulting explosion caught the first ship off guard, its shields overloading and collapsing as the reactor detonated in a silent fireball.
But the other two were on her.
Lasers and kinetic rounds tore into her shields. Alarms screamed in a deafening cacophony. A plasma burst struck her port wing, melting armor and crippling the thruster. The Ladybug spun, out of control. Another blast slammed into the main hull.
The hull ruptured.
Ishtar's world became a red hell of emergency lights and the shrill scream of escaping air. She wasn't going to be destroyed. She wouldn't give them that satisfaction. With the last scraps of control, she pointed the nose of the dying ship toward the rust-colored orb of the nearest desert planet. Reentry was a nightmare of fire and vibration. The impact was final—a thunderclap of tearing metal, followed by absolute silence.
She disconnected for a moment, the phantom pain of the crash echoing through her real body. When she reconnected, she forced the cockpit open.
The sight was a painting of desolation. Beneath the glow of two suns, the Star-Mite lay broken, tipped on its side like a dead insect, one wing buried deep in red sand. The landing gear was shattered, twisted beyond repair. She was alone, hundreds of light-years from any port, in a ship that would never fly again.
In that deafening silence, the truth struck her—not as an emotion, but as the result of an equation she had refused to solve.
"He was just trying to help," Helen's voice whispered in the quiet of her pod. "And I sent him away."
She stared out at the endless desert. The fault was hers. And that realization wasn't just a setback.
It was the collapse of her philosophy.
Her solitary arrogance, her refusal to trust, her paranoia… it wasn't her armor.
It was her greatest weakness.
Loneliness was not strength.
It was a single point of failure.