Jonno Virek never trusted rocks that talked back. But out here, drifting on
the ragged edge of the Belt, anything was possible. His ship, The Peregrine
Queen, had picked up a distress call from an uncharted asteroid that,
according to every known chart, ought to have been silent.
When he dropped into orbit, the rock itself spoke through a crackling radio
channel.“Help me.”
Jonno pinched the bridge of his nose. “Brilliant,” he muttered. “I’m hallucinating again.”
But the voice continued, desperate and metallic.
“My mind is breaking. Save me.”
Jonno geared up, checked the oxygen mix, and gave the ship’s battered console a thump for good luck. Then he launched himself across to the asteroid’s surface.
The structure was no ordinary lump of iron and ice. It was riddled with strange conduits and antennae, hints of something built long before humans even dreamed of crossing the stars. An alien brain, half-fused with rock, had been left to rot for centuries.
Jonno listened carefully to the ghost in the circuits. It poured out memories of stars long gone, civilisations turned to dust, songs nobody could sing anymore. It wanted to be freed.
He sighed. “You cosmic types always pick me, don’t you?”
With a delicate twist of a plasma torch, he cut through the final cable binding the ancient machine to its prison. The voice gave a relieved sigh -then faded to nothing.
Jonno straightened, alone once more, while the asteroid’s surface began to crumble, freed at last from its centuries of torment.
He kicked away and soared back to The Peregrine Queen, already thinking of the next port, a hot cup of reconstituted coffee, and maybe - just maybe - a job without haunted space boulders.
We enter new posts on a regular basis and sometimes the posts seem to change themselves!
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