Chapter One: The Lead
The Aletheia cut through the dark like a blade — 1.3 kilometers of gleaming hull, heat-displacement fins humming low, weapons silenced but primed. From orbit, it looked like a warship. It was more than that.
It was a hunter.
Investigator Vale stood in one of the observation bays above the primary hangar, watching the docking clamps release a smaller enforcement shuttle. Below, agents swarmed, loading tactical gear and forensic kits. All around him, screens flickered with system scans and data feeds from the latest smuggling busts. It was a well-oiled machine.
He didn’t need it — not for this.
“She’s jumping the protocol stack like a bored god,” someone muttered behind him.
Vale turned slightly. Juno sat half-slouched on the railing’s edge, chewing on a stim stick, fingers dancing over a holopad. She didn’t look up.
“Station security logs are garbage,” she said. “Encrypted like they were trying to keep out toddlers. I’m in.”
“You’re not officially cleared to access that feed,” Vale replied.
“I’m not officially cleared to be on this ship.” She grinned. “Yet here I am.”
Vale said nothing. She was right. Again.
They’d been on the case for months now — a cold trail that turned warm only days ago, thanks to a private transmission from Myrrha, a long-buried contact on Orannis. The message had been short: They moved it. Prime Station. High-level black market exchange incoming. You’ll want to be fast.
“It’s the artifact,” Vale said.
Juno gave a low whistle. “No kidding. The one from the temple site?”
“Preliminary scans suggest ancient construction. Precursor-level materials. We lost the trail after it was smuggled off Orannis. Until now.”
Juno’s tone shifted. “One of ours went missing chasing that signal. She was Guild. Her trace ends two systems from Prime. We want her back.”
“You sure she’s not just... off-grid?”
“No.” The grin was gone now. “She left a trace behind. Not enough to follow. Just enough to tell us something bad happened.”
Vale nodded once. That was Juno’s version of concern.
From the comm deck above them, Commander Reyna’s voice filtered through the PA. “All units, prep for recon insertion. Target location: Prime Station, Deck 83. Tiers 6 through 9 marked hot.”
The ship adjusted course. Lights flickered in the hallway as the Aletheia’s systems rerouted power for a tactical drop. But Vale was already moving.
“I’m going in quiet,” he told Reyna over comms. “No full deployment. Just me and the hacker.”
“You sure?” came Reyna’s reply. “Prime’s a hole. Your call, but I’ve got squads on standby.”
“I don’t want to spook them.”
“Understood. You’re green-lit.”
Juno was already pulling on her coat — long, dark, reinforced with stealth fibers. She tossed Vale his shoulder-holster. “Let’s take a walk through the underbelly.”
Prime Station loomed ahead — a titanic construct spinning slowly against the black. It could dock over a thousand ships at once across its labyrinthine levels. Drones swarmed its outer shell like insects tending a hive, repairing breaches, swapping modules, scanning for threats.
It wasn’t a spaceport. It was a city built on decay and barter.
Their shuttle locked onto the police and maintenance deck on the far end. Far from the bustle of the trading tiers. As they disembarked, Vale gave a subtle nod to the dock officer and kept walking.
“We’re going in through Tier 7,” he said. “Dockmaster there has a history with smuggling crews. If they brought the artifact through this place, he’d know.”
“Unless they paid him not to.”
“Which is why you’re here.”
They stepped into the access elevator — a rusting, graffitied thing — and began descending into the station proper. Music drifted up from below. Voices argued in half a dozen languages. The smell of old metal, machine oil, and cooked street meat filled the air.
Prime Station was alive — but barely.
Juno leaned against the wall of the elevator. “You know this won’t be clean. If they brought the artifact here, it’s either long gone... or waiting in a vault with a dozen guns on it.”
“I’m hoping for the second.”
The elevator groaned to a halt. The doors slid open with a screech.
Crowds milled through the docking corridors. Neon signs blinked half-lit messages in Trade Standard and forgotten tongues. Ship captains yelled at freight bots. Drifters stared with hollow eyes.
Juno stepped out first. She didn’t blend in, but she didn’t stand out either. She belonged in chaos like this.
Vale followed. Hand near his sidearm. Eyes sharp.
They disappeared into the warren of Tier 7. One more pair of ghosts chasing shadows.
“Artifacts don’t just vanish,” Vale said quietly. “Not without help.”
Chapter Two: Prime Station
The deeper they go, the darker it gets.
The deeper into Prime Station they walked, the less it resembled anything resembling law, order, or structural integrity.
Tier 7 was loud, crowded, and always dim. The lighting system flickered overhead in intervals, and everything smelled like recycled air, engine coolant, and the faint, acrid tang of plasma scorches that had never been fully cleaned.
Vale kept his posture upright and expression neutral. Juno, in contrast, moved like she’d grown up in a place like this — fluid, head down, hand lightly brushing the pulse-holster on her hip under her jacket.
"Dockmaster's on Level Nine, sector K,” Juno said, eyes on the overlay display coming through her contact lens. “You know he’s got three bounty flags on him?”
“Which is why he’ll talk. No one wants to be noticed by the Aletheia.”
She snorted. “Except smugglers with death wishes. Or someone with a backup plan.”
They crossed through a market sector carved out of an old cargo hangar. Vendors shouted from behind stalls of contraband tech, engineered spores, and jewelry made from scrap starship plating. Juno peeled off for a second, scanned a surveillance pylon, and popped back beside Vale before anyone noticed.
“I ghosted the camera logs,” she said. “We’re invisible now — for fifteen minutes. Then we’re ghosts with flashing red targets.”
They found the dockmaster in a back room that smelled like sour beer and melted plastic. He was a four-armed Varnathi hybrid with skin like rusted armor and a toothpick hanging from his lower tusk.
When Vale stepped inside, the man looked up and immediately dropped the toothpick.
“I don’t know anything.”
“You didn’t ask what I’m here about,” Vale said.
“Don’t need to.”
Juno leaned on the doorway. “You’re sweating through your chest plating. We’re guessing that’s guilt, not fashion.”
“Listen,” the dockmaster said quickly. “I don’t deal in artifacts. Don’t touch that cursed stuff.”
“You logged a freighter four days ago under a falsified transponder,” Vale said, holding up a datapad. “Cargo manifest scrubbed. Came in hot. Stayed less than four hours.”
“Half the station does that—”
“This one offloaded a crate with shielding used in ancient-site transport. And it was moved through your bay.”
Silence.
Juno walked to the wall panel and tapped in a few keys. “No backups. Wow. You wiped the camera logs on your own. Brave. Or stupid.”
The dockmaster rubbed his chin-plate. “I didn’t touch the crate. Didn’t open it. Didn’t want to know. They paid premium creds, real clean. Ship name was Plutarch.”
“Where’d it go?”
“No idea. But I saw one of the handlers slip — dropped something. A coin or chip, I dunno. Left it behind.”
He opened a drawer and tossed Vale a small, scorched token.
It was flat and black, shaped like an uneven hexagon. On one side, a symbol had been etched — and half-burned.
A circle with nine marks. One of them missing.
Vale turned it over. “This is old.”
“Real old,” Juno added. “Guild archives have records of a symbol like this — The Sign of Nine.”
The dockmaster took a step back. “I don’t want to know. I’m out. That’s all I’ve got.”
“Fine,” Vale said. “You’ve done your civic duty. Maybe we won’t send the bounty hunters after you.”
As they walked out, Juno muttered, “He’s lying. Not about the crate — about being scared. He knows what the Sign means.”
“Do you?”
Juno frowned. “I’ve heard whispers. An old smuggler circle. The ones who dealt in more than just weapons and drugs. Precursor relics, forbidden tech. They were supposed to be extinct.”
Vale pocketed the token.
“Extinct things have a habit of coming back.”
They moved quickly through the next level. Juno pulled up a feed from a hijacked surveillance drone hovering over one of the lower warehouses.
“There,” she said. “The Plutarch’s last logged cargo ended up in a depot subleased by a shell company. I’m seeing heat signatures — and not just guards. Weapons.”
“Tactical?”
“No. Casual. Guard dogs, not soldiers. Low-level muscle.”
They took the long way around, ducking past broken lifts and past hollowed-out airlocks. At the depot’s entrance, Juno ghosted the perimeter sensors. They slipped inside like shadows.
The crates were still there. Shipping tags removed. No ID.
Vale crouched beside one. A seal had been broken — carefully.
“They’ve already moved the artifact.”
“Yup. This was a middle-stop.”
From deeper in the warehouse, movement.
Then — shouting. Someone must’ve spotted them. The warehouse lit up in a flash of red.
“Time to go,” Juno snapped.
A shot rang out — plasma bolts sizzled past the stacks. Vale returned fire once, then yanked Juno behind cover.
“Six of them, maybe seven,” she said.
“Too many to take clean.”
“Then we don’t.”
Juno slid out a small cube, tapped it, and tossed it into the center of the room. A concussive flash detonated — just noise and light.
They ran.
Back on the public lift heading toward the maintenance levels, Vale stared at the token again.
“Why nine?” he asked aloud.
Juno was still catching her breath. “Maybe nine relics? Nine members? Nine systems?”
“Or nine pieces.”
She looked at him.
He looked back.
“We’re not chasing a smuggling crew,” he said. “We’re chasing a resurrection.”
She didn’t smile this time.
“Then we better figure out who’s behind it — before they find the next piece first.”
Chapter 3: The Brotherhood
The Aletheia shimmered under the false starlight of Prime Station’s upper bay, her hull marred with scratches from an earlier skirmish but otherwise quiet — like a beast in wait.
In the ship’s forensic lab, Vale stood over a rotating holographic scan of the crate fragment they’d recovered. Filaments of alien alloy flickered in the air, unfamiliar even to the ship’s vast xenological database. But it wasn’t just the metal that disturbed him — it was the etching, carved not by tool but by touch. The Sign of Nine.
“Organic traces,” the forensic VI intoned. “Residual pollen—species unregistered in SolNet archives. Likely origin: Outer Rim, black zone. Probability of link to Orsari system: 87%.”
Vale frowned. Orsari was a name he hadn’t heard since the Treaty of Abandonment. An outlaw system. Dead to official star charts.
He tapped his comm. “Juno, meet me in Briefing. Bring eyes.”
In the tactical hub, Juno sat sideways in her chair, long legs draped over the armrest, eyes flicking across a feed of encrypted comms and interstation transfers. She looked up only when Vale entered.
“Got something weird,” she said, nodding toward the screen. “The Plutarch’s gone dark. No departure logs. No docking trail. But—” she tapped a console, “—its jump signature left a residual echo. They ghosted, fast and dirty, toward Orsari. Same system the crate traces to.”
Vale narrowed his eyes. “So they’re running to something. Not from us.”
Juno hesitated. “I also scraped the metadata from a dock transaction. The crate wasn’t scheduled for smuggling. It was ‘scheduled for acquisition.’ Official phrasing. Like a transfer between collectors.”
Vale tilted his head. “Who?”
She smirked, then pulled up a stylized seal — a phoenix clutching a ring of ancient star-charts.
“Ariston Dal,” she said. “Highborn antiquities dealer. Private vault up in Arcadia Ring, Section Nine. Very posh. Very off-limits.”
Vale grunted. “Doesn’t add up. Why would a collector use a known smuggler crew like the Plutarch’s?”
Juno gave him a dry look. “Because Dal doesn’t want anyone to know he’s collecting forbidden alien relics?”
“Or because he’s working with the Brotherhood.”
Later, in his quarters, Vale reviewed his mission log while the hum of ship diagnostics whispered in the background. The data lined up too neatly — Plutarch, the Sign of Nine, Orsari, and now Dal. But something still itched beneath his skin.
He keyed in a secure line to the ship’s commander.
“Commander Tess, we have a confirmed lead on the artifact. Likely jump to Orsari. We’ll need authorization to pursue.”
A pause. Then, flatly: “Understood. Keep it off-record. You’ll have the codes.”
He blinked. “Just like that?”
Tess’s voice didn’t waver. “You know how deep this goes. Stay quiet, Vale. The fewer eyes on this, the better.”
The line cut.
Juno found him in the galley later, nursing synthetic caffeine and staring into space. She slid into the seat across from him and, for once, didn’t quip.
“You’re thinking about the leak,” she said.
Vale didn’t look up. “I don’t trust Tess anymore. Something about the way she gave approval... too clean. This mission was supposed to be recon. No one outside the Aletheia should know what we found.”
Juno leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I checked our outbound comm logs. Someone transmitted off-book last night. Short burst, tight-band encrypted. Not mine, not yours. Maybe not even crew.”
He looked at her. “Then who?”
“I have an idea,” she said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Before she could elaborate, red light flared through the overhead panels.
“Warning. Internal breach. Engineering Bay compromised. Launch sequence sabotaged.”
Vale was already on his feet. “We’re being stalled. Someone doesn’t want us following the trail.”
Juno’s voice was grim. “Then we’d better get it fixed fast. Because the Brotherhood? They don’t wait.”
Chapter 3: The Brotherhood
The Aletheia shimmered under the false starlight of Prime Station’s upper bay, her hull marred with scratches from an earlier skirmish but otherwise quiet — like a beast in wait.
In the ship’s forensic lab, Vale stood over a rotating holographic scan of the crate fragment they’d recovered. Filaments of alien alloy flickered in the air, unfamiliar even to the ship’s vast xenological database. But it wasn’t just the metal that disturbed him — it was the etching, carved not by tool but by touch. The Sign of Nine.
“Organic traces,” the forensic VI intoned. “Residual pollen—species unregistered in SolNet archives. Likely origin: Outer Rim, black zone. Probability of link to Orsari system: 87%.”
Vale frowned. Orsari was a name he hadn’t heard since the Treaty of Abandonment. An outlaw system. Dead to official star charts.
He tapped his comm. “Juno, meet me in Briefing. Bring eyes.”
In the tactical hub, Juno sat sideways in her chair, long legs draped over the armrest, eyes flicking across a feed of encrypted comms and interstation transfers. She looked up only when Vale entered.
“Got something weird,” she said, nodding toward the screen. “The Plutarch’s gone dark. No departure logs. No docking trail. But—” she tapped a console, “—its jump signature left a residual echo. They ghosted, fast and dirty, toward Orsari. Same system the crate traces to.”
Vale narrowed his eyes. “So they’re running to something. Not from us.”
Juno hesitated. “I also scraped the metadata from a dock transaction. The crate wasn’t scheduled for smuggling. It was ‘scheduled for acquisition.’ Official phrasing. Like a transfer between collectors.”
Vale tilted his head. “Who?”
She smirked, then pulled up a stylized seal — a phoenix clutching a ring of ancient star-charts.
“Ariston Dal,” she said. “Highborn antiquities dealer. Private vault up in Arcadia Ring, Section Nine. Very posh. Very off-limits.”
Vale grunted. “Doesn’t add up. Why would a collector use a known smuggler crew like the Plutarch’s?”
Juno gave him a dry look. “Because Dal doesn’t want anyone to know he’s collecting forbidden alien relics?”
“Or because he’s working with the Brotherhood.”
Later, in his quarters, Vale reviewed his mission log while the hum of ship diagnostics whispered in the background. The data lined up too neatly — Plutarch, the Sign of Nine, Orsari, and now Dal. But something still itched beneath his skin.
He keyed in a secure line to the ship’s commander.
“Commander Tess, we have a confirmed lead on the artifact. Likely jump to Orsari. We’ll need authorization to pursue.”
A pause. Then, flatly: “Understood. Keep it off-record. You’ll have the codes.”
He blinked. “Just like that?”
Tess’s voice didn’t waver. “You know how deep this goes. Stay quiet, Vale. The fewer eyes on this, the better.”
Juno found him in the galley later, nursing synthetic caffeine and staring into space. She slid into the seat across from him and, for once, didn’t quip.
“You’re thinking about the leak,” she said.
Vale didn’t look up. “I don’t trust Tess anymore. Something about the way she gave approval... too clean. This mission was supposed to be recon. No one outside the Aletheia should know what we found.”
Juno leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I checked our outbound comm logs. Someone transmitted off-book last night. Short burst, tight-band encrypted. Not mine, not yours. Maybe not even crew.”
He looked at her. “Then who?”
“I have an idea,” she said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Before she could elaborate, red light flared through the overhead panels.
“Warning. Internal breach. Engineering Bay compromised. Launch sequence sabotaged.”
Vale was already on his feet. “We’re being stalled. Someone doesn’t want us following the trail.”
Juno’s voice was grim. “Then we’d better get it fixed fast. Because the Brotherhood? They don’t wait.”
Chapter Four: The Smuggler’s Trail
The chase tightens. The pieces shift. And someone is always watching.
The Aletheia had barely cleared the orbital base’s gravity well when the trail reignited.
Juno stood on the bridge beside Vale, eyes flicking between data feeds. Her code had finally cracked the encrypted logistics mesh that masked the Plutarch’s second destination. She turned to him, her expression a mix of triumph and dread.
“They didn’t go far. Just hidden well. Terraforming Station K-7. Abandoned. Outlaw system. Officially scrubbed from charts three years ago. Still broadcasting a ghost signal.”
“Good place for a black-market trade,” Vale said. “Too good.”
Reyna gave them a nod from the command dais. “You have operational command. Take the shuttle. Use tactical discretion.”
Juno smirked. “That’s code for ‘don’t blow it up unless you have to.’”
Scene Break – Arrival at K-7
Terraforming Station K-7 drifted in orbit around a cracked rock of a planet — a half-finished shell of what might have become habitable. Now it was nothing but dust, storms, and silence.
The station itself was massive but decayed. Towering cylindrical modules with faded industrial markings. Scorch marks near the docking ring. No power signature.
Except…
“There’s life support,” Juno said. “Low draw. Just enough to keep a few corridors breathable. Someone’s still here.”
Vale nodded. “Then we’re not too late.”
They landed in covert mode — no signal, low power. Aletheia’s shuttle clamped silently to the derelict ring.
Juno patched into the door’s old access node.
“They jerry-rigged the system. Half the defenses are shut down, half still armed. They didn’t want visitors — or witnesses.”
“Then we’re exactly the kind of problem they didn’t plan for.”
Scene Break – Tactical Infiltration
Vale moved first — quiet, weapon ready. Behind him, Juno looped the internal sensors, feeding him updates through his earpiece.
They cleared two levels before the ambush.
Flashfire grenades. Close-range autoguns. Not professionals — mercs. But well-paid, well-warned.
Vale dropped two with precision shots. Juno blacked out half the corridor, rerouted power, and looped the turret feedback so fast it looked like they disappeared.
Afterward, silence.
Then footsteps. Not running — walking.
Vale signaled Juno to stop.
A man stepped from the shadows. Clean suit, smooth movements, hands empty — a broker.
Behind him, a containment case hovered, sealed tight. Artifact-sized.
“I assume you’re here for this,” the broker said. “Unfortunately, you’re late.”
“Who bought it?” Vale demanded.
“I didn’t ask names,” the man said, lips twitching with amusement. “But the transaction credentials were... historical. As in, from an extinct planetary government. Smart. Untraceable.”
Juno stepped beside Vale. “That’s not just historical. That’s a cover. A deep one. The only people who could pull that off are—”
“Insiders,” Vale finished. “From our side.”
The broker nodded once. “Which means you already lost.”
Then he dropped a smoke charge and vanished into the dark.
By the time Vale and Juno cleared the smoke, the artifact case was gone. Transported via rail system — deeper into the station — and then jettisoned from an auxiliary launch tube.
Juno cursed. “Trace signature already scrambled. They launched it straight to a relay ship. Pre-coded jump.”
Vale turned, jaw set. “Get us a vector.”
“Working on it.”
Scene Break – The Second Sabotage
As they returned to the shuttle, Vale paused.
Something felt off.
Then Juno’s screen flashed red.
“They hit us again. This time, remotely. Jump coils are burned. Someone’s watching our movements.”
“How?”
She didn’t answer — not yet.
They limped the shuttle back to the Aletheia, forcing an emergency landing at a major IE Base in a nearby system — one of the oldest installations still operating. Giant orbital drydocks wrapped around the station like scaffolding on a dying star.
The planet below was mostly IE territory — training grounds, war memorials, labs, and hidden bureaucracy.
They needed repairs. They also needed answers.
Scene Break – Becky’s Farm
While the Aletheia was refitted, Vale took Juno planetside again — this time not for steak.
This time for truth.
They drove past the training ranges and deep into the countryside again. Becky’s restaurant was closed, but the fields behind it were alive — tended by retired agents and veterans, all carrying the silent weight of having seen too much.
Juno looked around. “Everyone here’s missing something.”
“Yeah,” Vale said. “And they’re still dangerous.”
They found Becky repairing a drone near the back fields.
He showed her a still of the broker. She frowned.
“That face matches a handler I worked with — during the old Teague investigation.”
Vale stiffened. “He survived?”
“Not only that,” she said. “He was promoted. Black ops division. Paper trail ends a year after the case went dark.”
“And the artifact?” Vale asked.
Becky pulled out a box from an old storage trunk.
Inside: a replica of a similar artifact — or part of it. Burned, ancient, inert.
“Everyone thought this was the only one,” she said. “We were wrong.”
As they left, Vale looked back toward the fields. Then he turned to Juno.
“They’re not just resurrecting the Brotherhood. They’re building something.”
“A map,” Juno said. “A star map.”
“And the artifact is a piece of it.”
Chapter Five: Ghosts and Truth
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And someone’s been fanning it for years.
The Aletheia coasted into orbit of IE Fortress Station Eos, trailing a plume of fried jump-coil slag behind her. Drones clamped onto her like repair barnacles as scaffolds extended and power umbilicals latched into place.
Inside, the ship’s corridors buzzed with engineers and security staff. Half the Aletheia’s systems were in lockdown for forensic sweep — standard protocol after sabotage. Vale stood by the central viewport, watching repair crews swarm like insects over a wounded beast.
“You ever seen a full internal probe on a capital-class ship?” Juno asked, leaning on the wall nearby.
Vale didn’t answer immediately.
She tilted her head. “You don’t like it here.”
“No,” he said. “This station has too many ghosts. And too many eyes.”
Scene Break – The Briefing Room
Commander Reyna had called a closed-door meeting. No aides. No comm links. Just Vale, Juno, and the brass.
“We’re under silent observation from Central Command,” she said. “They want updates on the artifact trail — but not via official channels. That’s never good.”
She pushed a holoslate forward.
“A second artifact was found three weeks ago. Not by us — by a private collection authority. They turned it over to an encrypted archive facility in neutral space.”
“That’s where your trail leads now.”
Juno leaned over the slate. “What kind of archive?”
“High-security. No weapons. No surveillance allowed. Only verified scholars, historians, and licensed clients get access. It's designed to be politically neutral — off-limits to even us.”
Vale’s voice was flat. “Unless someone with clearance gets in.”
Reyna nodded once.
“And the worst part?” she added. “That broker you encountered? His clearance traces back to our system. An old identity buried inside the IE’s own black files.”
Juno looked up sharply. “He’s one of us?”
“He was,” Reyna said. “Name: Arven Gell. Last assigned to an intelligence unit that was disbanded six years ago — on paper.”
Vale clenched his jaw. “The same time the original artifact investigation was buried.”
Scene Break – Planetside Walk
Later that evening, Vale took Juno down to the planet below the station.
The sky was bright with orbiting ship lights — a constant reminder of just how militarized this world was. But where they walked was quieter.
Outside the main facility sprawl was a rural district the brass liked to pretend didn’t exist — a buffer zone filled with ex-operatives, war veterans, and ghosts.
Becky’s second farm wasn’t listed on any IE maps. But Vale knew it well.
The restaurant had reopened. But today, Becky met them outside — a tight expression on her face.
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Someone came by here asking about the old smuggling case. Said he was IE, but his ID didn’t ping right. Left a message for you.”
She handed Vale a small metal chit. He scanned it.
The text that appeared was short:
“Next time, don’t bring a hacker. Or a camera.”
— G
Juno’s face twisted into something cold.
“He knows we’re still tracking him.”
Becky stepped away and came back with a sealed case. Inside was an old, sealed IE field recorder, the kind only used for black-box ops.
“This was taken from the Plutarch’s crew five years ago,” Becky said. “Before the mission went dark. I was told to destroy it.”
“But you didn’t,” Vale said.
“Because I knew someday someone would come back asking the wrong questions.”
They played the file. Static. Voices.
A woman — shaken.
“They didn’t steal the artifact. They found it. Or a piece of it. The rest… the rest is out there. It’s part of something larger. They called it… the Ninefold Map. And they said it could change everything.”
Then a man’s voice, low and firm.
“Don’t tell Command. We don’t know who’s listening. Teague’s already compromised.”
The file ended.
Juno looked at Vale.
“Ninefold Map. Nine pieces. Nine systems.”
Vale nodded grimly. “Sign of Nine wasn’t just a symbol. It’s a literal map.”
“And if they collect all the pieces…”
Juno’s voice trailed off.
“They might not be smugglers,” she said finally. “They might be cartographers.”
Scene Break – The Setup for the Next Move
Back on the Aletheia, repaired and ready, Vale addressed the crew in the ready room.
“The next location is a neutral vault orbiting a gas giant. No weapons. No comms. No armor. We go in quiet, clean, and fast. In and out.”
Reyna added: “You’ll be shadowed by one of our internal affairs observers — in case another sabotage attempt occurs.”
Juno sighed. “Just what I wanted. A babysitter.”
Vale looked out the window toward the stars.
“If they’re this desperate to stop us…
Then we’re close.”
Chapter Six: The Artifact
In the vault of secrets, the only way out is through.
The Vault didn’t have a name. Just coordinates.
It orbited the storm-ripped gas giant Virellon like a polished tooth embedded in rot — all white plating and artificial gravity plates, a monument to sterile neutrality.
Juno hated it the second she saw it.
“Places like this aren’t built to store truth,” she muttered. “They’re built to contain it.”
Vale checked his sidearm before stepping out of the shuttle. It would stay there — sealed in a locker inside the Vault's customs module. They were entering under assumed identities: cultural attachés, academic liaisons with clearance granted through the IE's diplomatic backdoors.
Their observer came with them — Lieutenant Serel, internal affairs liaison. Young, quiet, unreadable.
Juno didn’t like her either.
Scene Break – Entering the Vault
Inside, the Vault was pure precision: silent corridors, gravity just a touch too light, data stations that interfaced only by retinal scan and gene tag. Everything reeked of money and secrets.
Vale played the role well — quiet, confident, official.
Juno, in contrast, feigned wide-eyed academic interest. But her eyes constantly flicked to concealed panels, sensor nodes, and private corridors.
The artifact wasn’t on public record. But Juno had already cracked that part.
She pinged Vale through a silent comm.
“Storage quadrant theta-nine. Sub-level. No escort logs. Black classification.”
Vale turned to the Vault’s curator — a tall, thin man with immaculate posture and glacier-blue eyes.
“We’ve heard rumor of an unlisted item… ancient, pre-FTL origin. Cultural value.”
The curator gave a thin smile. “Rumors have no clearance, Director Vale.”
Which meant yes.
Scene Break – The Artifact Revealed
They were guided down to Theta-9 — into a temperature-controlled vault room, lit with soft blue strips. Only a single case occupied the space.
Inside: the artifact.
It looked like a fragment of a star map — a carved triangular shard made of unknown alloy and stone, etched with precise celestial geometry. A piece of something larger.
Vale stared.
Juno didn’t.
She was looking at the security logs behind the case.
“Vale…” she said through comms. “It’s already been accessed. Two hours ago. By someone with Aletheia-level clearance.”
He turned slowly.
“Serel.”
The internal affairs officer blinked. “What?”
“You’ve been feeding someone updates.”
Serel backed up half a step — just enough to confirm it.
Juno lunged forward and grabbed a small tool from her sleeve — jamming it into the access panel. The Vault’s soft alarm tone began to pulse.
“Why?” Vale demanded.
Serel’s mask cracked. “You don’t understand. This isn't just about smuggling. This is about control. The Ninefold Map shows coordinates outside known space. Places we haven’t colonized. Places they don’t want us to find.”
“Who’s they?”
She hesitated.
Then the answer came from behind them.
“Me.”
Arven Gell, the broker from K-7, stepped through the vault entrance like a shadow peeling from the wall. Vault security didn’t even try to stop him.
“Don't bother,” he said. “They work for me now. Or rather, they work for what’s coming.”
Scene Break – The Fight, the Hack, the Escape
Vale drew a hidden wrist-blade and lunged. Gell side-stepped, fast and trained.
Juno slammed her hand into the emergency override.
“Vault lockdown in 30 seconds.”
Gell smirked. “Won’t matter.”
He tossed a black hexagon into the air — a fold disruptor. The walls shook. Gravity buckled.
Serel grabbed the artifact case and ran — but Vale tackled her mid-stride. They crashed into a table, the case skidding.
Gell reached for it — but Juno was already in the system.
She locked the doors, severed comms, triggered a quarantine seal.
“You’re not walking out with that.”
“Neither are you,” Gell said. He held up a small transmitter. “If I don’t return in ten minutes, the next piece is destroyed.”
Vale hesitated — but Juno didn’t.
She hacked his transmitter, looped the kill signal, and sent a false confirmation to Gell’s relay.
He blinked — just once — and the moment he did, Vale landed a punch straight to his jaw.
By the time the Vault’s automated defense bots arrived, Serel was unconscious, Gell restrained, and the artifact back in its case.
Scene Break – Back on the Aletheia
Later, in the ship’s secure bay, the artifact was placed inside an analysis chamber. Reyna and Vale watched as it began to rotate slowly under the scanners.
Lines of alien star coordinates glowed across its etched face.
“Juno?” Reyna asked.
She tapped a screen, pulling up the holographic model.
“This is a quarter of the map,” she said. “Each point aligns with systems that don’t exist on our charts. But look at this — the orientation matches ancient planetary drift models.”
Vale frowned. “From when?”
“From before Earth’s calendar began.”
Closing Scene – The True Scale
In the dark, alone in his quarters, Vale looked at the map piece again. He called up the database of the original Sign of Nine symbols. With Juno’s help, he overlaid them with galactic coordinates.
They formed a spiral.
A route.
Not random — not smuggling paths.
A pathway to something. Maybe a weapon. Maybe a message. Maybe something older than the IE itself.
Behind him, the door slid open.
Juno stood there, quiet.
“It’s just one piece,” she said. “And someone still wants it buried.”
Vale nodded.
“Then we dig.”
Chapter Seven: The Sign of Nine
The truth was never buried. It was scattered.
The Aletheia flew dark through interstellar drift, locked in a data silence while the crew absorbed what they'd found.
In the secure analysis bay, the artifact hovered under scanner-light — its surface etched with patterns older than human civilization, rotating slowly like a planet waiting to be charted.
Vale and Juno stood side by side, staring at it in silence.
Reyna’s voice crackled through the private comm.
“We’ve intercepted chatter. Someone’s already moving toward the second shard. Blackstream couriers, flagged with ancient Teague encryption.”
“Then it’s not just Gell,” Vale said. “It’s the whole old network.”
“Worse,” Reyna replied. “It’s still active.”
Scene Break – The Map Comes Together
Juno's fingers danced across the console.
She brought up the partial map from Becky’s old case, overlaid it with the Theta-9 artifact, and rotated both in a shared axis. Vale leaned in.
Nine pieces.
Nine shards.
Nine ancient smuggling paths... not to wealth, but to hidden stellar sites, systems thought to be lifeless — or lost.
Each site tied to rumors from fringe explorers:
• Dead systems with anomalous gravimetric fields
• Ruins orbiting neutron stars
• Places where time flowed wrong
“They weren’t smuggling treasure,” Juno whispered. “They were hiding this. Dispersing it. Making sure no one found all the pieces.”
“Why?” Vale asked.
Reyna entered the chamber, crossing her arms.
“Because together, the Nine form something too powerful to leave in one place. A weapon. Or worse — a beacon.”
Juno turned to her. “You think the Brotherhood was trying to protect us?”
“No,” Reyna said. “I think they were trying to buy time.”
Scene Break – The Tapestry Revealed
With the Theta-9 fragment activated, the combined data began to unfold.
Stars and ancient language markers stitched together like a fabric. At the center: a black zone. No light. No signal.
Juno whispered, “This… this isn’t a map to a place.”
“It’s a map of voids,” Vale realized. “Systems removed from the records. Blanked. Erased.”
Juno enhanced the center.
A name appeared. Not in human language — in glyphs older than any known database. But the Aletheia's linguistics AI offered a translation:
Origin Null
Scene Break – Confronting the Brass
The Aletheia’s bridge was cleared for senior personnel only.
Vale stood before the holotable, flanked by Juno and Reyna. The brass had dialed in — shadowy figures on hologram links, their faces blurred, voices modulated.
He gave the summary. Artifact confirmed. Brotherhood alive. Traitor caught. Map decrypted.
Silence.
Then one voice said:
“This operation is now under Strategic Intelligence Oversight. You are to hand over all material and cease pursuit.”
Reyna raised a brow. “On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that some truths are too big to handle.”
Vale stepped forward.
“I respectfully decline.”
Another voice, colder: “Commander Reyna, relieve him.”
Reyna didn’t blink.
“No. This crew just uncovered the first proof of pre-human civilizations in the galactic record — and a network of operatives inside our own agency working to suppress it. You don’t get to sweep this.”
“Then you will be court-martialed.”
She smiled.
“You’ll have to find us first.”
Scene Break – Final Preparations
The Aletheia disconnected from command channels.
Systems went dark. Power rerouted. Jump coordinates locked.
Reyna stood before her crew.
“We are now a rogue ship — temporarily. Until we understand what this map really leads to. Until we know who built the Ninefold trail. Until we know why the Brotherhood tried to erase it.”
Vale turned to Juno.
“You in?”
She smirked. “Wasn’t planning on going home anyway.”
Reyna gave the order.
“Initiate Operation: Sign of Nine.”
The Aletheia vanished into the jumpstream — no longer a hunter chasing smugglers, but something else.
An explorer.
A threat.
A secret weapon in motion.
Epilogue – The Hidden Piece
Far from the limelight, on a moon cloaked in perpetual twilight, an old figure in worn robes stood before a pedestal. On it, a fragment of the ancient artifact pulsed softly — the glowing heartbeat of a mystery far from solved.
Meanwhile, back on a quiet, sprawling farm, Vale had finally hung up his badge. He was home again with Becky — savoring the rare peace of earth-grown food, the simple comfort of old friends, and the long-delayed quiet after the storm.
As for Juno, she vanished into the shadows of the Hacker Guild, a ghost whispered about in the darkest corners of the interstellar net. Some say she’s still out there, pulling strings, fighting shadows nobody sees.
Officially, the case was closed. The Brotherhood dismantled. The artifact secured.
But those who’d followed the trail knew better.
The real story was only just beginning.
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