The Blackreef Belt filled the viewscreen in jagged silence. Amidst the cold rock, black and grey that drifted among the deep void of space, gleams of light flickered here and there. Stars peeking between the gaps. Ice and ore gleaming against the weak, distant sun. Pentecost wondered if they were beacons to guide her through this bramble patch, or false signs to lure her off the path and into the dark.

Tempest slowed to thrusters, the deck’s hum changing without the firing power of the warp core. At Helm, Hargreaves checked and rechecked the navigational sensors.

‘Outer cluster’s stable, Captain,’ she confirmed. ‘Ready to head further in when you like.’

Pentecost slung one leg over the other in the command chair. ‘You make it sound so easy, Lieutenant.’

‘It’s certainly not,’ muttered Sorren at Science, flickering through sensor returns. ‘Electromagnetic scattering, gravimetric shear… this asteroid field is not welcoming detail.’

‘And what we can see is bad enough,’ said Valois at her side, posture straight. ‘I recommend a measured box-pattern survey of the outer belt before we press deeper, Captain. Get the lay of the land.’

‘Safe and steady,’ Pentecost mused. ‘But we could be here for months trying to map this whole thing out. We press deeper and see what we can see.’

Renard’s voice cut across from Tactical. ‘Navigational shields are up, phasers on standby. We can deal with minor hazards Helm can’t bypass, Captain.’

The corner of Pentecost’s lips curled. ‘See? Nothing we can’t handle. Helm, one-quarter impulse. Let’s follow Science’s nose.’

Hargreaves grinned, hungry and eager, and Tempest slid forwards until the Belt swallowed them. Through the viewscreen, they could see the navigational deflectors shimmer as dust and rocks pattered against it like sleet on glass.

Sorren’s fingers moved briskly across his console. ‘Beginning spectral sweep, narrowed for duranium and tritanium composites of twenty-second-century manufacture. Interference is… ugly. We’ll need repeated passes to strip out the noise.’

‘What’s your degree of confidence?’ Pentecost asked.

‘If I sweep a sector thrice?’ Sorren’s brow furrowed. ‘Enough to be sure that if there’s nothing here, we’ll know that.’

That became the pattern, not only for hours, but nearly two days. Much as Pentecost had rejected the sweep of the outer belt, the sweep further into the field was little better. But despite Valois’s caution, she suspected that if there was anything to find in those outer reaches, Tempest’s sensor suite would detect it. Here, amid clustered, drifting rocks, they would need to be all but on top of something to make a discovery.

Thirty-two hours in, on another interminable bridge shift which still needed everyone at their sharpest, Sorren’s voice cracked through the bored tension like a whip. By now, their search pattern and mapping was projected as an overlay on the viewscreen, sensor feeds and charting progress a gleaming grid before the sight of the field.

‘Hold.’ Sorren’s hands swept wide, magnifying a section of the display. Among the noise and tumbling rock, a shard gleamed. Twisted duranium, half-melted girders, and burnt-out alloy that didn’t belong to this asteroid field.

Science was hours and hours of boring procedure punctuated by moments of sheer uncertainty that usually, Pentecost knew, ultimately led back to the boredom. She tried to swallow the quickening of her heart as she leaned forward. ‘Magnify again.’

The plating turned slowly in the void, and there, charred but visible, sprawled lettering: USS GLE-

Scorched and twisted metal swallowed the rest.

Now Pentecost’s heartbeat thudded against the breathless silence of the bridge crew. She had to wet dry lips to speak. ‘The Glenmore.’

Hargreaves tilted her head. ‘Part of the task group?’

‘One of the scouts,’ Pentecost said. ‘Launched 2147, former Earth Starfleet incorporated into the Federation Starfleet. Captained by Commander Hanley, veteran of the Romulan War, but then…’ She let her recollections trail off, eyes latched on the viewscreen.

‘Confirmed Federation alloy,’ Sorren said a moment later, tone almost reverent. ‘Composition matches late-22nd century Starfleet standards. This was a starship.’

‘Damage analysis,’ Pentecost ordered.

Renard’s eyes flickered across the readouts at Tactical. ‘Plasma scoring. Klingon disruptor signatures, period-consistent. Multiple strikes along hull seams. They wanted her crippled, not destroyed in the first volley.’

‘Classic Klingon hunting,’ Valois said grimly. ‘Wound them so you can board them.’

Sorren clicked his tongue. ‘But look here…’ The screen lit with overlays: cross-sections of the hull plating, lines traced where stress fractures ended. ‘Disruptor fire collapsed the hull polarisation, but there’s no antimatter dispersion in the field. No warp core breach. No cascade detonations.’

Pentecost’s eyes narrowed. This was venturing beyond her expertise, the technical analysis of a dig site she needed the likes of Sorren to tease out. ‘Which means?’

But the response came from Renard. ‘Glenmore didn’t explode. She was crippled, not killed here.’

Sorren nodded, enthusiastic at the pickup and response to his points. ‘And if this was where a whole task group was wiped out, in a field this dense, we’d still see signatures and remains of multiple warp cores, residual antimatter. There’s none of that.’

‘One ship, overwhelmed,’ murmured Valois. ‘The scout got caught alone?’

‘The Glenmore fell, but the rest ran, or fought elsewhere. This was an ambush, a first blooding.’

‘Or the last,’ Renard pointed out.

Hargreaves’s voice was hushed. ‘So the rest of Eurus-7 is still out there.’

Pentecost swore. ‘There’s no way warp signatures have lingered two-fifty years.’ Antimatter traces, or the lack of them, were one thing. Even radiation captured by the alloys of the field. Without other clues, they only had one ship.

The silence hung for a beat, then Sorren broke it again. ‘We weren’t the first people here.’

‘What?’ Pentecost’s head snapped around.

The magnified plating spun, edges highlighted in crisp green. These were not blast scars but neat, clean lines running the length of the hull fragment.

‘Salvage cuts,’ Renard said flatly. ‘Modern. A high-frequency beam sawed sections free. Reactor shielding stripped. Computer components removed. Standard commercial salvage.’

‘Residual impulse traces, too,’ Sorren added. ‘Two small ships, no more than freighter-sized, came within ten klicks of this wreck in the last… three to six months, by decay rate.’

‘Three to six -’ Pentecost snapped her jaw shut, swallowing indignation she couldn’t quite force to be as morally upright as it should. This wreck had been untouched for centuries, and then, in this narrow window, two groups had disturbed the grave. She scowled. ‘Scavengers.’

Renard was impassive as she studied. ‘Not amateurs, either. No sloppy cuts, no wasted energy.’

‘Which both contaminates these findings,’ Pentecost groaned, rubbing her temple, ‘and means there might not be anything else here. You said computer components, Lieutenant?’ A glance at Renard, who nodded coolly. ‘So, they’ve stripped out anything which might include, say, sensor records, combat records…’ She groaned.

The bridge fell silent again, only the quiet hum of the ship filling the pause. When Sorren spoke, it sounded less like he had a useful contribution, and more like he couldn’t stand the quiet.

‘It’s highly unlikely to be coincidental that the scavengers approached this location so recently,’ he began. ‘Nor that the scavengers were active here since the fall of House Pvarn.’

‘House Pvarn wouldn’t have allowed such scavenging?’ said Renard, audibly dubious, testing to see if he was building to anything useful.

‘They were an old, traditionalist house. They ruled with the usual iron fist,’ Sorren mused. ‘Then they go, and… all of these pockets of riches are rife for the taking.’

‘Does that help us find them?’ Pentecost asked sharply.

‘More than if they’d salvaged the Glenmore a hundred years ago,’ came the defensive response, but Sorren said no more, and again the bridge fell to silence.

Finally, Valois drew a slow breath. ‘Before departure, I prepared that strategic assessment of the Skaleri Sector.’ He sounded reluctant to admit it, clearly recalling her implied dismissal in their meeting. ‘The Federation doesn’t have detailed star charts, but we collated what’s known of Klingon traffic and infrastructure. There are only a handful of ports in the region capable of handling large salvage hauls. Two are associated with KDF or industry, not welcome to independents. That leaves one independent dock.’

Renard turned her head slightly. ‘This one,’ she said, pressing a button, and the viewscreen flashed up with the patchy star charts of the Skaleri Sector. ‘Remote. Outside of any of the KDF border patrols. I’ve been monitoring freighter signatures since we entered Klingon space. Dozens of jump trails in the last week converging on that system. All civilian haulers, transponders irregular.’

Pentecost looked between them. ‘You two were exchanging notes?’

Renard’s expression didn’t change. ‘The XO provided intelligence on the local area. I used it to support my strategic analysis of the mission.’

‘Without being asked?’ Valois said, a faint edge in his voice.

‘Without being asked.’

Pentecost waved away the nascent tension and stood, eyes gleaming. ‘Sounds like an ideal harbour for this blossoming new scavenger trade that’s popped up since Pvarn fell, right?’

‘It’s possible,’ Renard agreed. ‘And it matches behaviours in Imperial regions experiencing power upheavals.’

‘Bastards came here,’ Pentecost continued, wagging a finger, ‘cut up my ghost ship, hauled her bones out, and now we know where they are.’ She ignored Sorren’s mutter of, ‘your ghost ship?’

‘Captain,’ said Valois carefully, ‘we cannot be sure this port is responsible. It’s simply the most likely location. This means venturing deeper into Klingon space with limited intelligence, which carries considerable risk -’

‘Hargreaves, get us the hell out of this asteroid belt,’ Pentecost said, ignoring her XO’s protests. ‘And then soon as you can, set us a course for this independent port.’

As Tempest’s deck shuddered, Hargreaves firing impulse engines for them to begin swerving out of the density of the Blackreef Belt, Renard straightened at Tactical.

‘If we proceed,’ she said, ‘we’ll need a full tactical review. Local docking protocols, ingress and egress options, assessment of local dangers in lawless space.’

‘Draw them up,’ said Pentecost with a shrug, and turned back for one last look at the wreck. Charred, gutted, torn apart by time and scavengers. It should have been a grave, a reverent space of discovery and respect, a memorial lost to time.

Instead, some spacers had ripped the Glenmore’s guts out for profit, before she could do so for science.