Her co-pilot, Kael, leaned over. “Gibberish. Cosmic ray hit the buffer. Purge it.”
But the navigation log showed one impossible entry: a destination flagged as 7sttarhd.ing .
When the shudder stopped, they were no longer in their galaxy. Outside the viewport, a seventh star – not a star at all, but a skeletal hand the size of a gas giant – slowly uncurled its fingers. Each digit was a ringed space station. Billions of lights flickered in the knuckles.
“That’s not a star,” she whispered. “That’s not anything.”
She punched in the translation. The screen flashed.
“No,” Lena said, zooming out the star chart. “It’s a coordinate encryption. ‘Seven star’ refers to the Pleiades cluster. ‘Hard ing’ – ‘hardening’ – a structural term. It means anchor .”
Kael reached for the emergency purge.