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The boy in the pod

  The Rustmoth wasn’t pretty, but it flew. Most days, that was enough.

  Its hull creaked like old bones. The engines coughed when pushed too hard. The air filters needed constant rewiring. But for Marloy Vell, it was home—and the last thing he had to call his own.

  Marloy had been a salvager since before the war broke the stars. He knew how to pull precious alloys from the carcass of a fallen dreadnought, how to haggle for parts in lawless stations, and when to run before pirates smelled weakness. He was tough, stubborn, and quiet. The kind of man who spoke more with actions than words.

  So when he found the pod—drifting silent among the debris of an old battlefield—he didn’t say anything at first. Just reeled it in, like catching a fish in an endless sea of black.

  Inside was a boy. Barely three years old. Pale skin, soft hair, wide green eyes that looked too calm for someone so young.

  No name. No ID. No records in any system.

  Just silence.

  Marloy didn’t know what made him do it. Maybe he was tired of being alone. Maybe he was haunted by the memories of all the lives lost in the war, and saw in the boy a chance to make one life count.

  He named him Vermond. Raised him on the Rustmoth, taught him how to weld before he could read. The boy grew up among scrap metal and solar storms, listening to the stories Marloy only shared after two cups of station-brewed tea.

  They were poor—always a job away from going hungry—but they were together. That made it enough.

  Vermond would stand on a crate to reach the console, grinning as he copied his grandpa’s every move.

  “Like this?” he asked, one hand gripping the manual throttle.

  Marloy would grunt, adjusting his grip. “Don’t yank it like you’re rippin’ weeds. You fly gentle, like you’re askin’ space for permission.”

  Vermond laughed. “Space don’t care.”

  “Aye,” Marloy said with a faint smile. “But she listens.”

  Their days were filled with small victories. A rusted freighter with a full cargo hold of salvage. A market vendor giving them a decent price for once. A warm meal in a backwater station where no one asked questions.

  Their nights were quieter. Marloy would sit by the viewport with a steaming mug, eyes fixed on the stars. Vermond would curl up nearby, head resting on a rolled-up jumpsuit.

  “Tell me a story,” he’d ask.

  And Marloy would tell him about the days before the war. About great empires that once spanned sectors, their banners shining gold and crimson in orbit above whole planets. He spoke of alliances broken, betrayals bought with blood, and a final cataclysm that tore through the galaxy like fire.

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  “But why did they fight?” Vermond once asked.

  Marloy looked at him, his face etched with time.

  “Because power makes fools of kings, boy. And when you give men the stars, they forget the ground they came from.”

  As the years passed, Marloy grew slower. His hands, once steady as steel, began to tremble. Vermond took on more of the work, never complaining.

  One night, after a long haul and a broken engine coupling, Vermond found his grandpa sitting on the floor of the engine room, back against the wall, tools scattered at his side.

  “You alright?” he asked, kneeling down.

  Marloy looked up. Eyes tired, but still burning with that old stubborn fire.

  “I’m proud of you, boy,” he said. “You became more than I ever hoped for.”

  Vermond’s throat tightened. “Don’t say it like that.”

  Marloy placed a hand on his shoulder. “There’s gonna be a day when I ain’t here. When the Rustmoth is yours. I know you’ll take care of her. And yourself.”

  Tears blurred Vermond’s vision. “You’re all I’ve got.”

  Marloy smiled. “And you’re all I ever needed.”

  He passed that night, quietly, under the stars he loved.

  Vermond buried him on a barren moon, marked the grave with a salvaged flight panel, and sat there for a long time, just listening.

  To the silence. To the stars.

  To the echoes of an oldman who had once pulled a boy from the dark and made him feel like he belonged.

  The Rustmoth was quieter now.

  Too quiet.

  The hum of the reactor, the creak of the ship’s old bones, the beeping of the scanners—they were all still there. But without Marloy’s voice, the ship felt empty. Hollow, like it had lost its soul.

  Vermond sat alone in the pilot’s chair, eyes locked on the screen as he drifted through the edges of a forgotten asteroid field. The navigation console flickered every few seconds. He hadn’t gotten around to fixing it. Too tired. Too lost in his own head.

  He hadn’t spoken a word in days.

  Not since he buried Marloy.

  Rations were running low. Fuel was below a quarter tank. The reactor was stuttering again, and the grav-gen in the back room kept shorting out. The ship needed more work than one person could give it.

  Still, he kept going. One haul at a time.

  It had been three weeks since he last docked at a station. He couldn’t stand the thought of people. Of noise. Of talking.

  Instead, he scavenged alone.

  Sometimes he thought he saw Marloy in the co-pilot’s chair, legs kicked up, arms folded, offering that old, dry smile.

  “You’re doin’ fine, boy. Just don’t let the dark get in your head.”

  Vermond would turn, heart pounding—only to find the seat empty.

  Always empty.

  On the tenth day after the burial, he tried to salvage a shattered freighter orbiting a dead moon. It was a standard run. No signs of pirates. No life signatures. Easy.

  But nothing was easy anymore.

  As he stepped into the broken ship’s airlock, a sudden jolt sent him crashing against the bulkhead. His oxygen valve cracked, releasing a faint hiss.

  He froze.

  Then the panic hit.

  Hands shaking, breath quickening, he slapped the emergency sealant patch against the crack. It held, barely. He forced himself to calm down, but his heartbeat didn’t slow until he was back aboard the Rustmoth, helmet off, gasping like he’d just escaped drowning.

  He didn’t move for a long time. Just sat on the cold floor of the airlock, staring at the wall.

  That night, he sat alone by the viewport with a cup of half-warm tea. He watched the stars move past like old memories.

  And for the first time in years, he cried.

  Not the silent kind of crying that slipped out at night when you were too tired to fight it. This was different. This was a storm.

  He punched the wall until his knuckles bled. Screamed until his throat was raw. He begged the stars to give him something. A sign. A voice. Anything.

  But the void answered with silence.

  Later, exhausted and shaking, he dragged himself back to Marloy’s bunk. He hadn’t touched it since the day he passed. The sheets were still messy. The old tool belt still hung by the door. Everything still smelled like grease and dust and the man who had once made this place feel like a home.

  Vermond curled up on the edge of the bed like a child and whispered:

  “I don’t know what to do without you.”

  The ship creaked softly in reply.

  In the following days, he tried to pull himself together. He fixed what he could. Rewired the nav console. Recalibrated the grav-gen. Rewrote the salvage scanner's targeting protocols. But no matter what he fixed, it didn’t fix the ache.

  He tried to work like Marloy had taught him—cautious, smart, focused. But without that second voice, that steady hand on his shoulder, it all felt like guesswork.

  And worst of all, for the first time in his life, Vermond was beginning to wonder if the stars were ever meant for someone like him.

  A nameless child found in a pod. A salvager with no history and no legacy. Just a ship too old to trust and a name too small to matter.

  Then, one day, while drifting near a mining graveyard orbiting a red dwarf, the scanners picked up a signal.

  Weak. Faint. But real.

  Vermond leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

  It wasn’t salvage. It wasn’t pirates.

  It was… a distress beacon.

  And it was recent.

  His heart began to race.

  He pulled up the coordinates, ran a trajectory scan. The signal was moving—slowly—but definitely moving.

  It wasn’t a derelict.

  It was a ship.

  Or a pod.

  Or someone alive.

  He stared at the readout for a long time, thinking of the day Marloy had found him drifting alone in the dark.

  Something about this felt different. Important.

  And despite the weight still crushing his chest, Vermond reached for the controls.

  He set a course for the signal.

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