The first thing she noticed was the silence. Not the absence of sound—the ship was always alive with it. Engines humming, boots against metal, distant voices echoing through narrow corridors. It was a different kind of silence. The kind that comes when you walk into a room and every conversation pauses for just a second too long. Mara felt it the moment she stepped aboard. Thirty men. And her. She had known that before arriving. It wasn’t a surprise. The assignment had been clear from the start. Still, knowing something and experiencing it were two very different things. “Welcome aboard,”...
Continues…