The targeting reticle flickered across my primary display, locked onto a tiny, high-density radar signature tumbling through the dark.

We had first logged the object three years ago—an absolute anomaly drifting through the void. At first, astrometrics assumed it was just a stray metallic meteorite. But nature doesn’t forge perfectly circular, hyper-dense iron plates with uniform thickness. Someone had built this. It was our first tangible proof of an intelligent civilization beyond our world.