An hour later, Yezzania was on the comms, and she was livid: „I told you to call as soon as you’re back, Red. You’re three days from being back, why’d you break radio silence?“

„Relax, Yezzania.“, Red responded through a connection that was barely holding up, „We’re already in the Junkstorm. Tricky enough to get a connection through at all.“

Then she waited. Faster-than-light communication was not instantaneous. It was fast, two more powers than FTL travel, but at their current distance the latency was still more than twenty seconds.

Yezzania’s voice was ice-cold as she answered that much later: „Red. Were you born yesterday? We both know there are aliens out there with much better tech than us. And for some of them, breaking our encryption is a middle-school science project. I hope none of them are listening. Keep radio silence until you are at the station. Out.“

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Silence fell over the cockpit of the Rusty Bolt, interrupted only by the whirring of the hyperspace drive and the blaring of the sensors picking up interference. That was not the welcome they had expected.

„What does Yezz know that we don’t?“, Grubs wondered out loud what they were all thinking, and calling their trusted fence by a short he wouldn’t dare to use if she were in the room. Even though she was a whole head shorter and maybe half his weight.

Twitch looked at Grubs: „We’ve all looked at the thing in our cargo hold for two weeks. It’s a hyperdrive core. There’s millions of them in the galaxy. Why would anyone care that we nicked one?“

Both of them looked at Red, and saw her tapping her chipped tooth with a fingernail, a sign that she was deep in thoughts.

„I don’t know.“, Grubs answered, chewing on a piece of wire as if it were candy, „It’s obviously little used, maybe completely new. It’s worth a fortune to us humans, but to the Xylars? Like losing a sock - yeah it’ll bother you but no big deal.“

Silence returned while the three were lost in their thoughts. It would be a long three days, and if Yezzania told them to keep radio silence, they’d do exactly that.