The First FTL Ship Returned From Deep Space As A Biomechanical Nightmare
Humanity's first faster-than-light jump succeeds. Six hours later, the test ship returns to its Kuiper Belt quarantine berth at exactly 812 degrees Celsius, and it refuses to cool.
Harmon knows the number. The navigation architect saw it in his preflight models, an unexplained constant he classified as noise rather than risk delaying the mission. Now 812 is spreading from the ship into Outpost K-9. Steel glows without deforming. Electronics stop obeying familiar rules. The station itself begins to change.
What came back is not ordinary heat. It is a foothold for the physics beneath spacetime…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.