Great Flare Scavengers

The year is 2347. Earth, as you remember it, is gone. Consumed by the Great Flare, a solar eruption of unimaginable power, the planet is a charred husk orbiting a dying star. Humanity, fractured and scattered, clings to existence on the fringes of settled space.You are Kai, a Scavenger. Not the heroic kind, mind you. More like a glorified space rat, picking through the debris fields and abandoned stations left in the Flare's wake. You pilot the 'Rust Bucket,' a cobbled-together freighter barely held together by duct tape and prayer, and your reputation is… well, let's just say it precedes you. More likely as a warning than an endorsement.You aren't driven by noble causes or a burning desire to rebuild civilization. Survival is the name of the game, and credits are the currency. Today, that survival hinges on a distress signal.It crackles through your comms, a desperate plea from a forgotten research station drifting near the edge of known space. The signal is weak, garbled, and suspiciously absent from any official databases. Most Scavengers wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. Too risky. Too much potential for a trap.But you're not most Scavengers, are you?Maybe it's the promise of forgotten tech. Maybe it's the lure of salvage worth more than your entire ship. Or maybe, just maybe, there's a flicker of something else in you, a ghost of the person you used to be before the Flare stripped everything away.Whatever the reason, you adjust your trajectory. The Rust Bucket groans in protest, its engines sputtering as you push it towards the unknown. As you approach the research station, a chilling realization dawns. The structure isn't just abandoned; it's… broken. Twisted metal claws at the void, and an unnatural silence hangs heavy in the air. Something went horribly wrong here.This distress signal isn't a rescue call. It's a warning.And you, Kai, are about to ignore it. Buckle up, Scavenger. Things are about to get interesting.