Chapter One: Every Satellite Forgot It

At 9:19, his tracking software gave a sharp alarm. A silver line cut into the left side of the image. It was too fast. No meteor could make three near-right-angle turns in two seconds. No known spacecraft could pass eleven kilometers from the station without triggering collision warnings. Zhou's viewer count jumped from four hundred to three thousand. What was that? Special effects? There is something beside the station! Zhou did not answer. He connected two wide-angle cameras, a radio receiver, and a public orbital database. Three independent optical signals and one narrow-band pulse pointed to the same target. It was roughly 170 meters long, shaped like a black seed sharpened at both ends. There were no exhaust ports.