Iron in the Vela Drift
Mara Voss scrapes corrosion off a contract and commits: forty thousand credits to recover a derelict gunship adrift in the Vela Drift, the graveyard where Republic seals rot and unclaimed wrecks become someone else's problem. She recruits a small crew, Pell Ostrum, Denna Reel, Idris Quill, Tann Yarrow, Sevryn Loke, and they push off from Orbital Port Tessik expecting a routine salvage run. The ship they find is not routine. Its logs contain transmissions from people not listed on any manifest; a recording, attributed to a long-dead operative named Aros Kettle, names names the Republic would rather forget. As they haul the wreck toward a buyer, rivals emerge from the drift, among them Veylan Sorc and the crew of a Meridian vessel under Captain Halden, each hunting the same ship for the same buried payload. Stakes rise when Lira Ostrum and Yula Cress become leverage, and the line between legal salvage and outright piracy dissolves in microgravity. Mara must decide whether to surrender the find, fight for it, or finish what Aros Kettle started. The credits no longer matter. What survives the crossing does.