They came like ghosts in a ripple of disturbed stars.
One second, the void was clean. Then it wasn't.
Iris's tone was as calm as ever, but Ethan could feel a shift in the Wraith's atmospheric pressure as her sensors locked on.
"Two Federation stealth-class frigates. Long-range scan confirms displacement field interference. No active ID broadcasting."
Ethan stayed in front of the viewport, eyes narrowing at the shadow shapes emerging from the dark. They didn't shimmer like normal ships. They warped, bent light unnaturally around their matte hulls, sliding into existence like wolves from fog.
"That's deliberate," Iris added after a moment. "Optical scrambling mesh. They want to be seen only now."
He folded his arms. "So they're trying to make a statement. Too bad we already noticed their approach, their efforts are wasted on us."
The two frigates halted in staggered formation, one remaining kilometers out, holding position. The other deployed two small, angular detachment vessels from its underside, triangular, wingless crafts bristling with sensor arrays.
One turned toward the drifting courier vessel. The other altered course… straight toward the Wraith.
Iris chimed again. "Encrypted comm link incoming. Naval Intelligence encryption pattern. High-clearance level six."
Ethan didn't move from where he stood. "Put it through."
A moment's pause then a voice, female, crisp, with the cold steel of rank behind it.
"This is Commander Laa'rosh Deyan of the Federation Naval Intelligence Response Division. We are initiating secure retrieval protocol. Transmit coordinates of the cryo unit."
Ethan raised a brow slightly. Not even a greeting.
Still, he replied calmly. "Coordinates relayed. The unit's in medical stasis. Stable."
"Understood. Prepare for boarding."
The line cut without ceremony.
He didn't say a word. Just let the silence hang.
The detachment vessel approached at a measured pace, its rear thrusters silent save for the occasional blue pulse. Docking arms extended like claws, latching onto the side airlock of the Wraith with a low metallic thud.
Iris sealed the internal bulkheads automatically.
Ethan stood just beyond the boarding hatch, hands loose at his sides, jacket on, Astral Slayer magnetized to his side. Not hostile, but not casual either.
The inner door opened with a hiss.
Four personnel stepped through in full naval ops gear, no Federation insignia beyond a subdued black-on-silver sigil patch on their collars. Tactical visors, sidearms, no words.
One moved forward, scanned the room with a sleek, wrist-mounted HUD. Another passed a hand-held sensor over the walls and bulkhead panels.
Then, without speaking, the third approached the cryo pod in the medbay. They confirmed vitals, connected a portable unit, and issued a soft acknowledgment to someone outside the ship via a secure channel Ethan couldn't hear.
Less than five minutes later, the pod was loaded into a grav-carrier and escorted out.
Before the airlock sealed again, the lead officer turned, eyes unreadable behind the helmet, and nodded once at Ethan.
And then they were gone.
The channel opened again, just as the detachment ship detached and began pulling away.
"D- Rank Mercenary Ethan Walker," Commander Deyan's voice returned, calm and unreadable. "The Federation acknowledges your adherence to protocol. This operation remains classified. You have our appreciation."
Ethan leaned slightly toward the comm mic. "Just helping a guy who didn't look ready to die."
A small pause.
"You're making a name for yourself. Winning a war against a criminal syndicate in Kynara, now this. Interested in joining the military?"
He let the words sit in the space between them for a moment before replying.
"No, I'm fine just living as a merc. Doing my job freely."
"I see." A longer pause. "Then keep doing it."
The channel cut out.
He stood alone again in the cockpit, watching the two frigates.
The first still loomed in the distance. The second hovered briefly by the courier wreck, likely boarding it now, retrieving the bodies, scanning for residual data, logs, and anything else not charred by space or time.
They moved efficiently. Like they'd done this before. Like they weren't surprised by what they found, just relieved it was still recoverable.
Which meant they expected someone to try and stop it.
Ethan narrowed his eyes.
"Iris. Anything else on their warp profiles?"
A soft hum as she scanned the space again. "Dampening fields active. Their departure vectors are scrambled. They will vanish within the next ninety seconds."
He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and stared out into the stars.
"That wasn't just a simple courier…" he muttered. "Their response time was too fast. Like they were already nearby."
"Or watching," Iris said quietly.
The first frigate began to shimmer again. not with light, but with absence.
It wasn't cloaking in the traditional sense. It was vanishing in a way that denied light any chance to catch its surface. Like the void had simply decided to reclaim its own. The sharp edges of its silhouette bent, blurred, then folded inward upon nothing. Its sleek outline faded into the starfield behind it until the eye couldn't tell where the vessel had once been.
The second frigate followed moments later, its burnless disappearance just as surgical.
No drive trails. No heat signatures. No warp echoes.
Just... silence again.
Ethan let out a long, measured breath.
He'd done everything by the book. Followed procedure. Didn't snoop too deep. Kept it clean.
But nothing about that exchange had felt clean.
Not the speed of their arrival. Not the silence in their voices. Not the way the boarding team had moved like a single thought across multiple bodies, efficient and unnaturally precise. And certainly not the nature of the cargo they retrieved.
A lone cryo-sleep courier holding a sealed diplomatic channel that had screamed of secrets too sharp to ever be handled without gloves.
The Wraith's sensor systems extended like invisible fingers into the void once more, sweeping across the grid.
"Nothing in range," Iris confirmed a moment later. "Residual particles are dissipating. They left no trail to follow."
Ethan remained by the viewport, his reflection dim against the reinforced glass. Outside, the stars continued their eternal shimmer.
He turned away slowly.
"Power down combat protocols," he said. "Let's drift for a bit before making the FTL jump to the Aldaron relay. No need to rush for now."
"Understood, Captain," Iris responded softly.
The ship shifted gently beneath his boots, the low thrum of weapon systems folding into dormancy. External running lights dimmed. The Wraith adopted a passive posture, hull emissions stabilizing to avoid drawing attention across any distant sensor sweeps.
He crossed the cockpit, boots whispering against the floor. At the central console, he rested one palm on the curved panel, watching faint traces of movement in the telemetry stream flicker and vanish.
His mind wasn't on the systems anymore.
The last image of those two frigates flickered in his thoughts, less like ships and more like shadows sculpted into the shape of war.
Warships made to look like ghosts.
They hadn't come out here because of a missed courier. They had come because they were afraid of what might happen if someone else had gotten there first. Afraid of who might have picked up the signal instead of him. Or maybe not afraid, maybe just calculating, removing risk before it sprouted.
And that courier pod?
That had been more than just a message delivery. More than military logistics or routine clearance. Ethan didn't need to read the contents to understand the weight of what had passed through his ship.
He felt it in the speed of their response. In the way Commander Deyan hadn't threatened, hadn't warned, hadn't even tried to be diplomatic.
They weren't cleaning up a mistake.
They were recovering a critical asset quickly before they lost the chance.