Xenia Canar [exclusive] Link

And she realized: the ship wasn't jealous. It was addicted to entropy.

She was born in the lower umbilical of the Resolute , a salvage freighter that had been threading the graveyard orbits of Proxima Centauri for three generations. Her mother, a welder with lungs full of stardust and regret, died six hours after Xenia’s first cry. Her father, the ship’s navigation priest, named her after a word he’d found in an ancient data-shrine: Xenia , the Greek concept of ritualized hospitality, the bond between guest and host. In a world where air was currency and a leaking bolt could kill a family, it was a cruel joke. xenia canar

And then she did the thing that would become legend. And she realized: the ship wasn't jealous

Using the misaligned gravity and the contradictory engine thrusts, Xenia turned her ship into a slingshot. The Resolute pirouetted on its axis, spun through the Corsair ’s firing arc, and used the enemy’s own magnetic wake to slingshot into the ring’s debris field. By the time the Corsair reacquired the target, the Resolute was hidden behind a cloud of ionized rock and frozen methane, running silent on cold thrusters. Her mother, a welder with lungs full of