Dust bit Kaelen Vance’s exposed skin, stinging the cuts already crisscrossing his knuckles. A relentless wind howled across Xylos-7’s scarred plains, rattling the corrugated iron sheets of the derelict outpost. He huddled deeper into his threadbare environmental suit, the thin fabric offering little defense against the planet’s perpetual chill. Every gust felt like a personal insult, a cold hand pushing him towards the crumbling edge of his sanity. Underfoot, the rusted plating of what used to be a command deck groaned. Beyond it, the skeletal remains of ancient data spires clawed at a perpetually overcast sky, monuments to a precursor civilization that had vanished long before humanity ever dared to dream of the stars. Kaelen stared at his palm, at the cracked data-pad clutched tight. Its screen flickered, a dead thing barely clinging to life. Just like him. Three months. It felt like three hundred years since the Galactic Authority’s corporate arm had ‘volunteered’ him for this. He was the expendable one, the black sheep with a knack for frontier survival but no political pull. Re-establish Outpost-7, they’d said. Salvage the mineral rights. Investigate the precursor ruins. Impossible directives on a forgotten rock where every breath was a calculated risk. His crew – a handful of grunts and hired muscle, each one more desperate than the last – were barely holding it together. Resources dwindled. Morale evaporated. No one expected him to succeed. No one expected him to return. Kaelen hadn't expected it either. This was a slow, agonizing death sentence, wrapped in corporate jargon. He rubbed a thumb over the comm-unit embedded in his wrist, its cracked display normally a chaotic mess of static. It was supposed to be his lifeline, his connection to… well, nowhere, really. But it was broken. Everything was broken. “Just my luck,” he rasped, the words thin against the wind’s shriek. His voice felt alien in his own throat. “Die on a rock forgotten by God and corporate, without so much as a final transmission.” No miracles for the likes of him. No convenient twists of fate. Just the grind, then the grave. He smacked the comm-unit’s casing against his thigh, a futile gesture. A spark, then a burst of distorted audio. Not static. Something else. A series of rapid-fire clicks, then a low, resonant hum he’d never heard before. The cracked screen, usually a kaleidoscope of dead pixels, coalesced into fragmented glyphs. Text scrolled, then glitched, then solidified. <DATA STREAM INITIALIZING…> Kaelen froze. His breath hitched, stinging his dry throat. He squinted at the display, convinced the deprivation was finally getting to him. Hallucinations. A symptom of acute Xylosian dust sickness, probably. <PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS MODULE ONLINE> He shook his head, pushing past the initial wave of confusion. This was no ordinary malfunction. The data, though broken and fragmented, seemed… coherent. Too specific. It wasn't just random system errors. It was communicating. His pragmatic mind fought it, screaming ‘malfunction,’ ‘delusion.’ Years of hardscrabble living had taught him to trust only what he could see, touch, and shoot. But the survival instinct, raw and desperate, clung to the impossible possibility. What if… what if it was real? The comm-unit pulsed, a dull ache behind his eyes. Information flooded his perception, bypassing his ears and eyes, bleeding directly into his neural interface. Fragmented prescience. Immediate probability matrices. Environmental threat assessment. Resource triangulation. The words weren't spoken, but *felt*. He squeezed his eyes shut, grappling with the sensation. It was raw, unfiltered data, almost painful in its intensity. A damaged tool, yes. A fractured window. But a window, nonetheless. Into something that shouldn't exist. This wasn't some ‘golden finger’ from a cheap data-fiction. This was a glitch in the void, a broken piece of tech offering a glimpse of what was to come. It was crude. It was dangerous. But it might just be the only thing that kept his dying heart beating. --- The comm-unit’s screen stabilized, displaying a series of cryptic lines. Kaelen stared, pulse hammering against his ribs, a desperate hope battling the cold knot of dread in his stomach. <DATA STREAM UPDATE: LOCAL> <1: Galactic Authority Council votes 67-33 to reclassify Xylos-9 as 'Contested Zone, High Risk'> Kaelen snorted, a bitter sound. Irrelevant. Xylos-9? He was on 7. Another distant political squabble that meant nothing to his immediate survival. His eyes flickered to the next line. <2: OmniCorp Q3 revenue forecasts downgraded due to 'unforeseen market instability' in Gamma Sector mining operations> More corporate bullshit. Probably some distant cousin of his, or some rival prospector, feeling the pinch. Had nothing to do with him, stranded and dying on this rock. He scrolled past the useless information, his finger trembling slightly. Then, the next line hit him like a kinetic slug. <3: Concentrated Xylite seam detected 3 clicks NW of Gamma Ridge, active during solar minimum. Vein stability: moderate. Estimated yield: high value.> Xylite. Rare earth mineral, high-grade power source. Priceless on the galactic market. Enough to buy his freedom, his escape, maybe even fund a small fleet to come back and claim this godforsaken rock. His breath hitched again. This was it. The opportunity. The one shot. His mind raced, calculating coordinates, estimating travel time, imagining the pure, raw Xylite sparkling under his extraction beam. A surge of desperate, electrifying purpose shot through him. He wouldn't just survive; he'd escape. His gaze dropped to the fourth line. His smile, already fragile, shattered. <4: Crewman Jaxson, processing current meal ration, introduced Class IV Neurotoxin, source: native 'Gloom-Bloom' flora. Toxicity: lethal.> Ice water sluiced through Kaelen’s veins. Every muscle in his body tensed. Neurotoxin. Jaxson. The name reverberated in his skull, cold and sharp. The comm-unit, a twisted oracle, had just laid bare a death sentence. Not from Xylos-7 itself, but from within his own miserable, dying crew. He felt the sudden, chilling urge to retch. The betrayal was a physical blow, worse than any dust storm. He’d known this mission was a long shot, but he hadn’t expected to be cut down by the very people he’d dragged along. A voice, rough with the dry Xylos-7 air, echoed from the makeshift camp a few dozen meters away. “Vance! Chow’s ready!” Jaxson. Kaelen’s head snapped up. He scanned the camp, the flickering light of the scavenged fuel-fire illuminating the figures of his crew. Jaxson stood by the bubbling synth-stew pot, his back to Kaelen, stirring with a battered utensil. The aroma, usually a welcome comfort in the barren wasteland, now clung to the air like a poisonous vapor. His Adam’s apple bobbed. He took a slow, deliberate breath, the recycled air tasting like ash. The comm-unit, still displaying the grim message, throbbed against his wrist. It wasn't a gift. It was a warning. A burden. But for the first time in months, Kaelen felt a cold, hard resolve settle deep in his gut. He was Kaelen Vance. And he wasn't going to die here. Not like this. Straightening his suit, he pushed off the rusted deck. The metallic tang of the stew hung heavy on the air, mingling with the bitter dust. He started walking, his steps deliberate, towards the flickering light, towards the waiting pot. Towards Jaxson. He would survive this. He had to.

A Glitch in the Void