Carrier P5-7 | Fail

She looked toward P5-7. The twisted solar arrays were still dark, but now she saw something else—a faint, pulsing light from the station’s core, deep inside its ruined structure. A light that matched the rhythm of the pod’s data pulse.

“You saw it,” Mira said. Her voice was flat, but her mind was already running through the failure tree, branch by branch. Carrier fail could mean a dozen things: a solar flare, a debris strike, a power collapse, or something worse. Something deliberate.

It had answered .

“I tried. The override is hardware-level. It’s like the station has taken control of our systems remotely.” carrier p5-7 fail

“Thermal signature. About two thousand klicks spinward of P5-7’s last known position. Small. Cold, but not ambient cold. Like something that’s been running and just shut down.”

Mira fired the maneuvering thrusters, a short burst that sent the Rocinante gliding toward the thermal anomaly. The ship’s hull groaned softly as it adjusted to the new vector. Through the forward viewport, she could see the distant glitter of P5-7’s solar arrays, but something was wrong. The arrays were askew—one panel twisted at an unnatural angle, as if something had struck it with tremendous force. And there were no running lights. No beacon. Just a dark, lifeless structure spinning slowly in the void.

Then she saw it.

“Mayday?” Dex asked.

“Maybe,” Mira said. “But her pod’s still transmitting. Let’s find out why.”

She suited up for EVA—a process she could do in her sleep now, though her hands trembled slightly as she clipped her tether to the hull. Dex stayed behind to manage the ship’s systems, his face pale on the comms display. Mira stepped out into the silence, her boots magnetizing to the Rocinante ’s skin, and then she pushed off toward the pod. She looked toward P5-7

She froze, mid-drift. “What?”

“P5-7 just came back online.”

“Already did. No match. And… Mira, it’s moving.” “You saw it,” Mira said

And then the text stopped. The screen went black.