Captain Eva Rostova was the most feared privateer on the Zero Meridian, not because of her ship's cannons, but because she always found her targets. Her secret was a map that didn't show locations, but probabilities. It shifted and changed, predicting the most likely path a ship would take hours before they took it.
Her crew was nervous. Their current target was rumored to be carrying the King’s Ransom in star-silk. But the map was acting strange. It usually showed swirling lines of light and shadow, indicating safe and dangerous routes. Now it was a blank, unsettling white space.
"It means they are taking a path with zero probability," Eva said, tapping the blank parchment. "A path that shouldn't exist."
"How can we follow a path that doesn't exist, Captain?" asked her first mate, Finn, wiping sweat from his brow.
"We create a probability," Eva said, smiling a dangerous smile. She ordered the helmsman to fly straight into a known asteroid field—a route everyone avoided, a route so dangerous nobody would be stupid enough to use it. They were creating their own 'impossible' path.
Finn gulped. "So, we just guess?"
"We don't guess, Finn," Eva said, her eyes glinting. "We force the future." She pointed towards a small, uncharted nebula. "They will try to disappear into the nebula's static. It's the only place they could go that the map can't read yet."
Against all logic, Eva steered their ship towards the swirling cosmic gas. The sensors went wild, picking up strange energy signatures and phantom signals. It was like trying to navigate through a dream.
Then, through a brief clearing in the swirling colors, they saw it. The King's Ransom ship, cloaked and attempting to hide, but caught in a ripple of gravitational distortion from the nebula's core.
Eva grinned. "Probability is a funny thing," she said. "Sometimes, you have to push it along."
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