"Come to me right away," Zoya said on the communicator. "I have an urgent job for you. You won't like it, but you will want to do it."

Argus replayed the recording as his ship arrived at Lastport, Zoya's words crackling through the console speaker as the world hummed around him. He leaned forward in the pilot seat, mulling over what in the Forge she had in store for him. She usually did spare her the details of her jobs. After all, if she revealed too much about what perilous site she heard through the grapevine, she would scare away most of her agents.

But this was the first time she reached out to him when he arrived in the system and with an urgent request. She did flatter Argus, but that was because he was only one of many scavengers she could pick off the spaceport.

So why did she need him?

Nevertheless, this boded well for his pockets. He was running low on credits again. If this job was this desperate, this could be the mission that pads his pockets enough that he can pursue his own projects for once. He knew he had been telling himself that for the last few months, but he had a feeling it would be this one.

As Karena's Reverie touched down in the spaceport, Argus rubbed his fingertips across the coin on his necklace. He rolled over the ridges and thought once more about what significance it held before time forgot.

Zoya's office was more of a workshop. As Argus entered the room, she was standing over the table, polishing the shell of a cast-metal beetle. The beetle was the size of a hunting hound. As the polish cloth glided across its surface, the metal hummed.

Zoya took a moment before noticing Argus. Once she did, she shifted from concentration to delight. "Hey, Gus! Safe travels, I hope?"

"Yeah," Argus said. "The jump went smoothly." He turned around the table. He resisted the urge to fiddle with one of the artifacts lying on the office's numerous shelves. Open surfaces propped up a deluge of artifacts, mostly sculptures and shiny curiosities.

Argus noticed that Zoya's was wavering as if she was padding an uncomfortable moment. He frowned. "So what's the job? You sounded pressed."

Zoya turned grave. She put aside the polishing cloth and pressed her hands against the table surface. "Thank the Chorus you're here. You were the only one that received my message and everyone else who I offered the job to turn it down."

"For real?" Argus asked. This confused him. While plenty of scavengers balked from particular expeditions, Zoya always found at least a couple of takers.

"I know. Everyone wants their share of the Jackel's treasures," Zoya said, alluding to her callsign. The Jackel was what the spacers preferred to call her. When Argus tried using that name, Zoya insisted on going first-name basis for each other. "And they did. The problem is, I lost contact."

Now this made more sense. "So your first scavenge party went missing," Argus said. "How do you know that it's not just interference from the site?"

"I know it wasn't," Zoya said. She looked him in the eye. "Because before I lost contact, the party liaison had sent me an SOS and included some worrying details about what happened. The rest of the party had sent him upwards to ask for help."

Argus huffed. "So this is a rescue mission. And I'm the rescue guy."

He half-expected Zoya to snap back at that comment—he was bitter about being pigeon-holed into a couple such operations. Instead, she had on her face an expression of concern. "You know one of the members of the missing party."

Argus anticipated what she would say next, and she followed through with what he feared.

"The party leader? It was Lucas."