Gan, shocked by Pelve’s tone, straightened up from his work, curiosity piqued. “A surprise? Coming from you, Pelve, that’s not something I hear every day.”
“Yes, indeed. I have been analyzing the ship’s manifests from the recent vessels we have scanned. One of the old Ellurian ships,” Pelve replied, savoring the moment.
Gan’s eyebrows furrowed, wondering where Pelve was leading with this. “Okay... What’s so special about this Ellurian ship?”
Pelve’s voice infused with an almost smug satisfaction. “Well, it appears to have once contained a fusion reactor. Top-tier tech, would you not agree?”
Gan froze for a moment, processing the implications. “A fusion reactor? No way, Pelve! If one was there, someone would’ve stripped it long before we got here.”
“Under normal circumstances, I would agree, Gan,” Pelve responded. “However, my scans are detecting a potent energy signature from the exact location where the reactor was housed, according to the schematics. It seems the reactor might still be there.”
A wave of disbelief, followed by a surge of hope, swept over Gan. He looked around at the emptiness of the ship, his heart pounding with excitement. “Pelve, please tell me this isn’t a sensor glitch. If it’s there… it could change everything for us.”
“Rechecking now, Gan,” Pelve assured. “Let us hope my initial scans were accurate.”
But his predicament wasn’t simple. His own physical well-being weighed against the lure of a vital resource. The confines of his spacesuit were now tight, the oxygen levels dipping precariously. He had pushed his physical limits to explore the other ships, the strain of the rigorous spacewalks taking a toll on his strength.
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The soft whir of life-support systems and the sporadic pings of incoming communication attempts from Elo interrupted the silence of the Valtorian. Each ping was a reminder of the line he had crossed, the lie he lived in his silence. He had evaded Elo’s calls, severed contact, and ventured into the forbidden, all driven by a desperate ambition to level the playing field. Gan couldn’t afford to put Elo off any longer, or he feared the Paktu would send SAR vessels out looking for him.
Yet, with his newfound treasures stowed within the Valtorian, he could return to the familiar. He could renew contact, resume his journey, and make his way in the universe, supplementing his ship with scavenged materials over time. The Universal Translator, the advanced spacesuit, the engineering tools, and the laser pistol were all valuable finds that added to the Valtorian’s capabilities. He had already achieved a significant advantage over his earlier state of inadequacy.
But the fusion reactor. It beckoned to him with a promise of power, a leap in the Valtorian’s potential that would level the playing field. With it, he could match, or perhaps even surpass, the capabilities of his classmates’ ships. It held the potential to turn the modest Valtorian into a formidable player among the star-scavenging vessels.
Yet the price of this power was a gamble of his own life. The cold, merciless void of space was not a realm to be trifled with, and he knew the dangers of exceeding his suit’s limits. Hypoxia, decompression sickness, radiation exposure—the risks were many and fatal. A single misstep could end his journey before it truly began. The ghosts of past mistakes and past losses whispered cautionary tales from the darkness of space.
He weighed the options in his mind, the magnitude of the decision pressing down on him. The desire to secure his future in one swift action battled against the preservation of his own life. His heart echoed the conflicting thoughts in its rhythm, caught in the pendulum of fear and ambition. Every factor of his life seemed to converge, each detail vying for dominance in his final decision.
To venture once more into the cold, uncharted realm of a derelict spaceship, or to retreat into the relative safety of the familiar? To seize an uncertain victory or to avoid a certain danger? The decision was his to make, and his alone. No mentor, no AI, no council could make this choice for him.