Read Chapter 25: The Message from the Planet

The communications array was a dead shrine of dust and frozen relays, but Kaelen had spent his life coaxing life from dead things. He knelt in the crawlspace beneath the console, the depleted Heartstone pressed against his chest like a cold warning, while Maris hovered over the cracked display above.

“Sector four relay is responding,” Maris said, her voice tight with strain. “Faint. It’s coming from the planet’s orbital ring, not the surface.”

Kaelen shoved a cable into the junction box and felt the ship’s ancient power grid shudder. “Patch it through. All bands. Audio and visual.”

“That will broadcast to every deck. The rebels, the loyalists, everyone.”

“That’s the point.”

Static screamed from the speakers first, a sound like the cry of a dying beast. Then the image resolved: a face, younger than he remembered but unmistakable, sharp-jawed and framed by wild, unkempt hair that fell across old cryo-scars.

Lyra looked into the camera as if she could see through time itself, and Kaelen’s throat closed.

“If anyone on that ship is still listening,” his sister said, her voice crackling with atmospheric interference, “this is Lyra Voss, former Second Navigator of the *Austerity*, and I’m speaking from the surface of Tsoria.”

Kaelen pressed his palm to the cold metal of the console, steadying himself.

“You need to know what awaits you. The colonists—the first generation’s descendants—they’ve spent two hundred years building their own cities, their own laws. And they’ve built defenses against anyone who might think they can come down and take what’s ours.”

The image shifted, showing a crude but massive structure: a long barrel of scavenged alloy and repurposed thruster casing, mounted on a ridge that overlooked a valley of green-tinted lights.

“This is one of forty anti-ship cannons positioned around our major settlements,” Lyra continued. “We can punch holes in anything that tries to land. The first warlord who attempts a reclamation will find his shuttle turned to scrap before he clears the atmosphere.”

Kaelen’s chest tightened. *Warlord.* The word was a hammer blow. She thought they were coming to conquer.

Maris leaned in close. “She’s not wrong to fear us. Look at what we’ve become.”

But then Lyra’s expression shifted. Softer. Almost vulnerable.

“But I know some of you aren’t like them. I know you were lied to, same as I was. Same as I fought against, from the cryo-brig to the escape pod that brought me here.”

Kaelen felt a jolt shoot through him. *She’s talking about the unknown ally. She knows who freed her.*

“If you can prove you come in peace—if you can show me the ship’s old command codes, the ones the real officers used, not Bel’s forged versions—I can disable the cannons long enough for a shuttle to land safely. I’ll be waiting at the western ridge landing field, forty-eight hours after this message is received.”

The transmission flickered, a wave of static eating the lower half of her face.

“Kaelen,” she said, and his name hit him like a physical blow, because she had no way of knowing he was listening—she was just speaking to the void, hoping. “If you’re out there… I didn’t abandon you. I never did. They told me you were dead. I only ran because I thought I was alone.”

The screen went dark.

Silence filled the communications bay. Kaelen heard his own breathing, ragged and hot.

Maris turned to face him slowly. “She’s alive. Your sister is alive.”

“She thinks they killed me.” Kaelen stood, his knees aching from the cramped space. “She’s been on that planet believing I was dead for a year.”

“The codes she wants—we have them.” Maris gestured toward the chip in his pocket. “Bel’s data chip. It likely contains the true command codes, separate from the ones he faked.”

Kaelen pulled the chip from his jacket, turning it over in his fingers. “We have to broadcast it. Open a channel to the planet and prove we’re not a conquering force.”

“And if we do, we reveal our position to every rebel faction on this ship,” Maris said. “Cassian’s people, the loyalists still hiding in the ducts—anyone could intercept that signal and pretend to be us. Someone could fire on the planet before we even make contact.”

Kaelen looked at the dark screen where his sister’s face had been. Then he thought of the vault, of Bel’s laughing departure in his escape pod, heading to Tsoria with no one to stop him.

“Bel has a head start of hours,” Kaelen said. “He could be landing there right now. He could be spinning this entire story—” he gestured at the array, “—framing us as the warlords. My sister’s cannons might be the only thing that stops him, or they might fire on us without asking.”

Maris’s jaw tightened. “Then we have to decide. Now. Before the rebels fracture and start choosing sides in the corridors.”

Kaelen weighed the chip in his palm. It was light, barely the weight of a coin. But it carried the truth of the whole voyage: that they had arrived, that the lie was done, that home was beneath them and it was green and alive.

He said, “We don’t broadcast to the planet.”

Maris blinked. “What?”

“Bel’s pod—where does it land? Which settlement does the old navigation system guide it toward?”

“Main colony. The capital. It’s the closest clearing.”

“Then that’s where we go.” Kaelen shoved the chip into his pocket. “We take a shuttle, we follow Bel’s trajectory, and we land on that same field with our hands up and the codes broadcasting on open frequencies the moment we break atmosphere. No one will dare fire on us if they see us arriving alongside a ship they recognize as one of their own.”

Maris stared at him, and then a slow, grim smile crossed her face. “You want to use Bel’s own escape route to outrun him to the surface.”

“He thinks he’s the only one who knows the way down.” Kaelen moved toward the door. “Let’s prove him wrong.”