Ghost Signals and the Void Run

The transit car lurches to a crawl. Ahead, the sealed bulkhead hangs under the tunnel lights, its seam lines trembling as Nahuli’s override bites into the lock.

Nahuli’s multi-tool spits a bright arc into the console. On his scanner, the routed maintenance beacon blooms beside Captain Kaelen’s encrypted access chain, a map and a warning at once.

The bulkhead groans wider by a handspan, then stops. A second lock catches deeper in the throat, and the car shivers in place while the tunnel behind them echoes with distant impact.

Nahuli reroutes the beacon, and the seam splits open just enough to reveal the dark transit throat beyond, leading straight toward the hangar and whatever Kaelen hid there.

Nahuli twists the spoof into place, and the second lock yields with a soft mechanical cough. The seam widens into a crawlable gap, dark rail throat beyond it breathing cold air.

A maintenance tag flashes green across his scanner, then resolves into a cargo routing stamp hidden under Kaelen’s authority chain. Someone has been moving sealed freight through this line.

The transit car shudders free of the latch. Beyond the opening, the tunnel angles toward a hangar access junction lit by faint warning strips and drifting dust.

The car settles into motion, carrying them toward the gap while the open bulkhead holds just long enough for a clean passage.

Nahuli leaves Maintenance transit car behind and arrives at Hangar.

The hangar opens around Nahuli in a broad, echoing span of steel ribs and warning lights. Dust hangs in the air, and the dock ahead sits half-lit, its service gantry exposed.

Zoya is already moving, one hand up in a sharp signal, her stance low and ready. Serafina veers toward the side controls, scanning the bay entrance for movement.

Nahuli breaks into a sprint across the hangar floor, weaving past a fallen crate and a loose cable snaking underfoot. The shuttle waits beyond the gantry, its hatch still open.

A side access panel pops open with a dull clang, and the hangar lights flicker as an emergency relay kicks over. The warning strips along the dock brighten to red.

Nahuli reaches the shuttle threshold first, the open hatch yawning in front of him while the bay behind begins to wake up.

Nahuli slides into the shuttle and drops into the pilot’s seat. The hatch stays open behind him as the bay lights strobe red across the instrument stack.

His multi-tool taps across the console, swapping the shuttle’s broadcast identity for a blank maintenance spoof. The old routing codes vanish from the active queue.

A second pass digs deeper, rewriting the software handshake and folding the drive signature into a low-power ghost pattern. The diagnostics blink green, then settle into a dead, ordinary hum.

On the side panel, the station’s own relay pings once and loses him. Outside, the hangar remains loud, but the shuttle now answers as scrap, not a target.

Nahuli keys in the final seal sequence. The shuttle’s hatch thumps shut, lock lights snapping from amber to green as the cabin pressure holds steady.

He folds the transponder spoof one layer deeper, scrubbing the outgoing handshake into the hangar’s own maintenance traffic. The bay can still hear him, but only as background static.

Outside, the hangar door begins to peel open under emergency motors. Red light spills through the widening gap, washing over the nose of the shuttle.

A burst of signal noise erupts across the nearby consoles, then dies cleanly. Whatever was listening gets only a maintenance ghost and a door cycle, nothing to aim at.

The bulkhead clears enough to show dark space beyond the hangar lip, but the shuttle still sits inside the bay, engines cold, hatch sealed tight.

Nahuli keys the release through the shuttle’s control spine. Below the cockpit floor, the docking clamps unlock in sequence, each latch answering with a hard, metallic snap. The whole craft gives a small shudder as the bay finally lets go.

The hangar feed flashes a clean status string, then dumps into a service fallback. For one bright second, the station’s own maintenance map shows the shuttle as authorized departure traffic.

The shuttle lurches free, skimming past the half-open bulkhead. Red light streaks across the canopy as the bay yawns wider behind them.

Nahuli’s last command carries into a clean launch burst. The thrusters catch, pushing the shuttle clear of the hangar lip and into open black.