coolant conduit and the main hull plating. It hadn't been crushed by space debris, nor had it suffered a thermal blowout. The heavy titanium housing was missing entirely, severed along a line so

exhaust settled into a dull, violet ember.

With the blinding halo cleared, the missing telemetry node came into sharp focus. Node 47-B sat precisely at the junction of the secondary

...no jagged shrapnel trailing into the abyss to explain the sudden telemetry failure.

Commander Vance adjusted the feed's gain, dialing down the exposure until the ship's distant plasma

...radiator vanes, and the thick, armored spine of the ship's midsection. At first glance, everything looked intact. No visible breach, no venting plumes of ice crystals, no

Then the glare receded, sharpening the vacuum into high-contrast black and silver. The vast, sweeping expanse of Section Four stretched into the dark, a silent landscape of thermal tiles, radiator