As the airtight hatch of the deep-space maintenance station hissed open, Lin Ye tapped the checkered pattern on the hilt of the pure-white dagger tucked at his waist, while an implanted chip in the nape of his neck crackled with uncontrolled interference currents🧬. The Alliance’s search team, hunting down rebels, had already sealed off Docking Port 3. As a retired navigator, he’d stashed half of the rebel leader’s star map—left behind—in a pre‑designed cavity inside the dagger’s handle. No one would suspect a 3D‑printed plastic dagger, even though residual radiation from his body had drifted into the detection zone; the metal detector would simply register it as harmless PLA filament🧩.

The cabin‑wall coolant clinging to the soles of his boots spread across the floor in faint blue smears. Lin Ye pressed himself against the corridor wall and slipped into an abandoned maintenance tunnel, where the low barking of the search team’s robotic dogs already echoed through the ventilation shafts. He tightened his grip on the hilt, the checkered pattern snugly fitting into the groove between the implantable micro‑nail and his palm—a custom‑crafted handle shaped to match his hand. Over three thousand hours of deep‑space jumps, he’d traced that pattern countless times, until it now conformed perfectly to the curve of his palm🔧.

This star map charted the antimatter storage facility left behind by an ancient civilization in the Kuiper Belt. The Alliance planned to blow it up to prevent the rebels from exploiting it, while the rebels sought to seize it to power their flagship’s warp drive. But only Lin Ye knew that, buried at the heart of the storage unit, lay the remains of his entire expedition team—abandoned by the Alliance all those years ago. Of the original twenty-one crew members, only a fragment of their communications remained stored on a tiny chip, hidden within the hollow tip of this very dagger⚫.

The search team’s spotlight swept around the corner, illuminating the hollowed‑out hole in the dagger’s blade. Light streaming through the opening cast seven crooked, uneven dots on the wall—representing the Big Dipper, the constellation of old Earth, the final course his teammates had marked back then. Lin Ye pressed deeper into the shadows, hearing the search team leader’s voice drifting through the pipe: “Target carrying a metal weapon—execute on sight.” He glanced down at the warm, pure‑white plastic blade in his palm, a faint smile tugging at his lips, and lightly tapped the tip of the hollow cavity—there was no metal here, just one gram of soil from the Moon of old Earth, and half a memory chip engraved with twenty-one names🌕.

In the next instant, the spotlight swung back, its cold, reflected glare momentarily blinding the approaching figures. The low barking grew ever closer in the ventilation shafts. This non‑lethal plastic dagger was ready—for whatever came next.