3. RadianceThe Radiant Dragon waited quietly for them at the assigned muster point. They nudged towards it on reaction drive, conscious that it had emerged from a battle with Concordance warships, and that they couldn't be at all sure their enemy hadn't captured it and done … something. It was completely dark, unresponsive to their attempts to communicate with it. That was bad, but it also meant that it didn't appear to be powering up to detonate some proximity trap. It hung in space at a canted angle relative to their approach vector – which meant nothing, but it was hard to escape the impression that it was irrevocably damaged. It looked like a dead fish drifting in an ocean current.
The only other artificial object in local space was a single free-floating nanosensor waiting for its da
