Zero Aculin's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Zero Aculin knelt in the mud beside the buried ship and pressed his clawed hand to its cold hull. Somewhere inside the ancient wreck was an intact drive core. Find it, and his tribe could rebuild the vessel that had crashed here and stranded his ancestors. They could reach the stars again. But the wreck was broken into three collapsed sections, and Zero did not know which one held the working core. Dig into the wrong one, and the whole ruin would fall and crush him. Behind him, his settlement clung to the crash site. Salvaged shelter frames leaned against woven coverings. Carved posts stood between racks of drying meat and stacked firewood. His people had made a home from the bones of the ship that failed them. Zero had promised them more than a home. He carried a spear on his back and a blaster at his hip, but neither weapon could tell him where to dig. He circled the wreck three times. The first section had caved inward, its roof sagging under wet soil. The second was flooded black to the waist. The third stood crooked but whole. Zero studied the seams. He was smarter than any hunter in his tribe, and he trusted patterns over hope. Then he saw it. A thin cable ran from the crooked third section, snaked through the mud, and vanished into the flooded second. Power cables led toward a live core, not a dead one. The intact drive sat in the flooded section, not the dry one his instinct favored. He waded in. Cold water gripped his legs. He followed the cable by touch, feeling along it until his hand met a smooth curved housing beneath the surface. He pried the panel loose. Inside, sealed against the water, a round core hummed faintly under his palm. Warm. Alive. Zero braced his shoulder and heaved it free. The housing shifted. Above him, the flooded section groaned and dropped a beam into the water an arm's length from his head. He froze, then pulled harder. The core tore loose. He staggered back through the flood, clutching it to his chest, as the ceiling behind him collapsed into the water with a heavy slap. He dragged himself onto dry ground and set the core down. It glowed. His people gathered around it, silent, then loud. He had the heart of a starship in his hands. But when Zero turned the core over, his claw found a fracture line across its base. A hairline crack, leaking a thin trail of blue fluid. The core was intact, but it was damaged. It would not run on its own. Somewhere he would have to find the tools, or the knowledge, to mend a machine older than his whole line. And that meant leaving the crash site, into lands his tribe had never dared to cross.