They were inside the emergency bay. The outer doors slammed shut. Gravity returned with a nauseating lurch as the bay pressurized.

]

Jax landed heavily next to her, the impact jarring his knees. He saw the problem—her umbilical was wrapped around a strut that was rapidly oxidizing, turning to rust in seconds as the anomaly approached. He pulled his utility blade, the metal glowing faintly in the starlight.

The object didn't attack in the traditional sense. It simply drifted through space, passing through the physical matter of the station’s communications dish as if it were smoke. Where it touched metal, the steel turned grey and crumbled into dust.